Der Adler Tag - Dieselpunk

German Secret Weapons: Blueprint for Mars by Brian Ford

2012-05-31T18:00:00.000+08:00

The German character has always respected practical attainments and academic endeavour. To this day, the visiting industrialist who goes to Germany - West or East - finds how helpful it is if he admits on his visiting card that he is ‘Mr Engineer’ or ‘Herr Doktor’ ; education, learning, and academic status have always been important parts of the German tradition.

In the 1930s this tendency was developed to the full. Through the propaganda machine of the Nazi empire-to-be, the academic and the engineer alike were esteemed as never before, and the aim of all successful men was to enter these professions and succeed within their framework. But as the Hitler regime came to power and began to exert its influence, there was a subtle indeed almost barely detectable change of emphasis. The pure scientist began to lose out of the favourable comment; the academic lost a little in favour - but the technician, the practical man, the engineer, these began an unprecedented climb to the greatest heights of status.

The shift of emphasis became out right bias, however, and particularly as more and more German scientists were being discriminated against because of supposed `racial inferiority', many of them uprooted themselves and fled the country altogether. By the late 1930s the change had been almost complete: only Goring remained with any deep respect for the intellectuals of Germany, and he used them to the full. One of his chief co-workers was a General Milch, part-Jewish, who became Head of the Technical Office of the Luftwaffe in due course. In spite of ‘mongrel’ background, as defined by Hitler, Goring had this man kept in a senior position for pure intellectual ability and practical skill.

But to some extent this anti-intellectualism of the Hitler regime did have its desired beneficial effect, for it turned the German people away from their almost slavish acceptance of the need for academic specialisation, and allowed them to assume that (because of the widely-publicised ‘inherent superiority’ of the German race) they were above the need to specialise: they could all be conversant with the problems of technology and the scientific society, and great pains were taken to make them feel that - no matter how superficially - they were in on things. Secondly, because of the drift from academic endeavour, more and more people became technical workers, and the shift from pure research was accompanied to a certain extent by a drift towards applied research, design, and development. The cult of progress became established, and in the German mind it was readily nurtured.

Germany has an equal tradition for good quality workmanship, for discipline and for endeavour. Thus it was that many of their largest firms were in the export field, with singularly up-to-the-minute sales equipment to back them, and this - prophetically - included the development of munitions. The wheels of big business soon allowed this side of the German industrial endeavour to reach large proportions; the Germans were one of the few nations who were in a position to supply modern, effective munitions. Why was this? Quite simply because of their active research capacity: munition supply is one of the branches of industry which, almost more than anything else, relies on being up-to- date - in short, the successful munitions manufacturer must be the most advanced technically. This and the encouragement of militarism by the Nazis as an ideal led inevitably to the upsurge of successful, giant, weapon manufacturing complexes.

And there was another factor, too, which - though designed to put a brake on the Germans' rearmament and to slow down their capacity to develop new weapons - actually had the effect of greatly intensifying development. This was the Treaty of Versailles which forbade the production of large ships, of high-capacity aircraft, of large-calibre weapons; but the Germans quickly overcame these limitations as far as they could by devoting new energies to making effective weapons within these limits. Thus one had convertible firearms, which could quickly be adapted for military use; one had high-velocity guns; one saw the pocket-battleship arise and the perfection of aircraft and gliders - all factors which, between them, enabled the Nazis quietly to evade many of the apparently inevitable restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles.

Factories in the industrial combines of Krupp, Mauser, and many others supplied arms and ammunition to many countries - including, in some cases, entire manufacturing establishments to countries as far away as South America - and including others, such as Russia, later to become her foes.

Even before the First World War there had been an Army Weapons Office, which had a branch known as ‘Wa Pruf’ - an abbreviation of Heeres waffenamt Prufwesen, or Army Testing Office - designed specifically for the testing and improvement of weapons. It was, in essence, a proving ground and from it many important new changes and modifications were derived. One of the experts in this division, Carl Cranz, later formed a section of the Wa Prdf known as Waffen Forschungs - Wa F for short - which was specifically set up as a research and ballistics institute in its own right. This formed the first basis for further development in the Hitler regime; indeed when Cranz retired (aged over seventy, according to reports) he was replaced by a Professor Schumann and it was he who remained in charge right through to the end of the Second World War.

But here too the trend away from research for its own sake took a toll. For the institute became less prestigious and its leader found he was often left virtually out in the cold; it was the more practical activities of Wa Pruf which seemed to be in greatest demand. Thus it was that the munitions manufacturers who did not wish to incur the labour and expense of establishing their own research institutes, passed their work over to the Waffenamt - but found that the drift away from pure research tended to deny them many of the benefits they might otherwise have derived. So, in essence, the Ordnance did not have the research facility they needed. When eventually things did develop in this sphere, it was almost too late. However the practical experiences of fighters and tacticians using German weapons in the Spanish Civil War did provide some valuable practical trials and experience of the weapons in practice.

In the naval field, much important introduction of new technology was undertaken. The limits set by the Versailles treaty on warships was 10,000 tons; but by the maximum use of light-alloy materials and the development of high-rate are welding of a remarkably sophisticated degree of design, the German technologists were able to overcome many of these limitations.

The research effort was largely based on the investment of consider able sums by the German business concerns who stood to make a killing by the production and sale of successful weaponry and equipment. There was an official Marine- Waffenamt (Naval testing office) under the Minister who acted as the Naval Commander - Oberkommando der Marine - and there were several experimental establishments(Versuchsanstalt) too. These included several organisations under the headings of Chemische-Physikana lische (Chemical and Physical Research), Torpedo, Sperr (Mines), and Nachrichen (Radio). Other facilities such as the Forschungsentwicklung Patente took care of patents and legal operations.

However in naval research too, in spite of the restrictions of Hitler's anti-intellectualism, the German resources were such as to establish a world lead in technical perfection and expertise. But in the Luftwaffe, things were somewhat different.

Here there was strong government research interest and, rather than leave things too much to the individual activities of the business combines, the technical competence of the government's resources was developed to a state of high activity and production. By shelving off the some what arbitrary demands of the policy coordinators of the government, the German air ministry was readily able to guard its independence of action; it would not be intimidated by anyone, and-probably partly as a result of the haughty, almost arrogant self-satisfaction of the army and navy research workers - it managed to create an aura of superiority for itself. Though Ger many, for the reasons we have already outlined, had a justified reputation as a leading producer of artillery and naval equipment, there were many other countries with equal or better air ministries and Germany did not have any unique position of peerlessness in this field. But the high morale of the Luftwaffe paid off handsomely and indeed it enabled the Germans to achieve very advanced aims indeed. The rocketry research and development, as a case in point, was, as we shall see, remarkable and indeed quite unique as an exercise in the application of technology on an unprecedented scale.

It was in 1935 that Germany managed to escape from the strictures of the Treaty of Versailles and set about the redevelopment of her air force in a big way. Not that she came to the problem completely cold: a secret (and quite illegal) arrangement had been under way for some years before - exactly how many is by no means certain - by which German airmen had been instructed and aided by the Russian air force in a reciprocal agreement. The Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe at about this time, General Wever, was fanatical about the potentialities of larger and longer-range aircraft as part of the expansionist policy of the Nazis. It must have been with great satisfaction that Germany built and flew the first all-metal air craft of any size at this time - the Dornier X - and many international trophies and prizes went to German aeroplanes in the late 1930s. It is said that a record speed of 469.22 mph was reached in April 1939 by a Captain Wendel, flying a Messerschmitt 109(R) - a speed not to be reached again until after the war's end, at least by air screw-propelled aircraft.

Even in this field the Germans were working secretly on a number of projects which were later to surprise the Western world at large; jet-propulsion was at this stage very much more highly developed than the Allies knew, and rocket-powered aircraft were already on the drawing board. The most terrible of all of the German secret weapons were the rockets, of course - and these were beginning to be developed too, behind closed doors; as early as 1931 the first of the modern liquid fuelled rockets took to the air and reached a height of perhaps 1,000 feet from a base in Dessau and within two years secret teams were investigating the possibilities of manned rocket flight. The quickest way of reaching the enemy is through the air, and it is only natural that it was the Luftwaffe research establishments that were amongst the most progressive in forging these new, surprising weapons of war.

And so whilst the military and naval specialists worked for much of the war effort through the independent, business-backed organisations designed to develop new - and thence marketable - weapons, the Luftwaffe research remained close to the government. It would have been sense less to set up governmental establishments, when there were such clear risks of duplication of the independent laboratories, and in addition it would have been financially difficult to tempt away the industrial research workers - who were by this time amongst the most highly-paid technologists and designers in Europe, and probably in the world.

But, with no traditional aircraft industry, the government became the only real supporter of aerial research; the men were trained, appointed, and distributed by a central machinery run by the Ministry at a senior level; their ultimate head, Goring, was as we have seen an admirer of brain power and what it could attain; and as the years ticked by the developments themselves set a precedent which (though badly-organised and too spasmodic to be effective by modern standards) had not been seen before in the history of warfare. For its time it was incredible - and it worked.

But where were the establishments, and what were they like? Perhaps as important, just how was the organisation arranged for this mammoth task?

At the head of the army research was the Supreme Commander, who - through Speer's Ministry of Arms and War Production - controlled the general policies of the Wa Pruf. On a par with this department stood the Waffen Forschungs, weapons research section, which tended always to teeter on the brink of prominence but which (probably due to poor organisation and conflicting policy decisions as the war progressed) never came to hold the same degree of prominence as Wa Pruf. Many students of the war years have in fact imagined that Wa F was a sub-division of the Wa Pruf itself, but in organisational terms the two were of equal status. Both were controlled in a single office known as Heereswafjenamt, or Weapons Office, under the control of General K Becker until his death early in the war years, when General Leeb took over. And finally, working alongside the departments Wa Pruf and Wa F, was the Beschaffung, or purchasing and production section. This was the commercial division responsible for obtaining tenders for production, the buying of raw materials and the letting of production contracts to outside firms.

Subdivisions were set up to investigate such separate branches of research as ammunition and weapons, engineering - in the broadest sense - signalling, optical and communications equipment, and rocketry. This somewhat anomalous state of affairs arose because rockets were regarded (as they still are, by some military men) as having a split personality. Some say they are in essence artillery shells, which happen to take their cartridge charge with them; others argue that they are really aircraft but with shorter wings and without the pilot.

And so two divisions of the army's Wa Pruf were set up: one for solid -fuelled rockets, the other for liquid -fuelled. With an enthusiastic Major General Dornberger at the head, a team of some 250 of Germany's best young scientists was assembled before the outbreak of the war and they were given money, status and equipment to - simply - develop world shattering rockets. From the pre-war site of Kummersdorf, the group moved in 1937 to Heeresrersuchsstelle (army testing ground) Peenemunde and began work in earnest. Later the facility was dispersed to Bliecherode and Kochel, after the Allied forces had learned of the Peenemunde centre and begun to attack it.

Kummersdorf proving ground - situated near the capital Berlin – was then developed purely as a proving ground for rockets and guns. There were said to be fifteen separate test areas, but throughout the war period the facility was not stretched to capacity. Many of Germany's most up-to- date and secret weapons were tested here until their every characteristic was known and understood, and as the war went on much of this assessment and proving analysis was carried out at a similar ground at Gottow.

Chemical warfare, which might well have provoked the most appalling consequences of conflict ever seen in warfare, was also in the Nazis' minds at this time. As we shall see, they spent much time and effort in the pursuit of faster, deadlier poisons and developed, among other less sophisticated secret materials, several potent nerve gases by the war's end. The centre of development and testing was at a proving ground near Raubhammer. The whole enterprise was carefully controlled and the camouflaged buildings were often virtually undetectable to even the closest aerial reconnaissance by the Allies.

And backing the whole set-up were the educational establishments and colleges (the Hochschulinstituten) - over 200 of them - and the independent companies or Firmen, on whom much of the research depended.

The organisation in the navy was basically similar: here too there were separate sub-divisions of the parent Ministry office, and as in the army research, much of the effort relied on the cooperation and support of the independent companies. The relevant head office here was the Marine -Waffenamt (Naval Weapons Division) under Speer. The various specialised sub-divisions were similar to those of the army and they were in turn backed by the experimental and proof divisions. These provided a cybernetic feed-back link to the development divisions, since teething troubles and suggested improvements that came out of the proving tests were rapidly and efficiently absorbed into the rationale for the following phases of development and in this way - a form of mechanical evolution by `survival of the fittest' - the quality was not only maintained but steadily and consistently improved.

The organisation of the air ministry was immense. In the very beginning of the preparation for war there was a change away from the organisational machine of the army and navy re search in that Reichsmarschall Goring took a prominent personal stand at the top of the tree and had overall control of policy and development (even above the level of authority of the Ministerium Speer). Immediately below him there was a split into two functions: the Reich Luftfahrtministerium, or Air Ministry proper, and the scientific and technical branch, responsible for secret weapon development amongst other tasks.

One of the main divisions here was the Berlin-based Technisches Amt, the chief technical office of the Ministry itself. Initially at the head of this important division was General Udet; he was replaced by General Milch for the bulk of the wartime period and, later, by General Diesing. Most of the staff of this division were, in fact, military men and their task was basically to organise and co-ordinate research and development of aircraft, aerial weapons, communications equipment, and the like - all of it done under conditions of top security.

The separate specialised organisations themselves were varied. Zelle was the division concerned with airframe design; Motor handled the production and research into aeroplane engines of all kinds. Gerate(instrumentation) and Funk (radio- communications and radar equipment) supplied the most up-to-date equipment for the flying forces, and Waffen, or weapons, carried out a prodigious amount of development into armoury of all kinds, with the exception of bombs. This was the responsibility of the Bomben division, who also had the assignment of developing new bomb sights and aiming equipment. Boden handled ground-based equipment and Torpedo included the research into mines dropped from aircraft of all kinds. The Fernsteuer Gerate embraced the rocketry that led to the development of the V-1 flying bomb. This was simply because, as described earlier, some of the rockets were regarded as being ‘pilotless aircraft’ and, as such, clearly they ought to be placed under the Air Ministry rather than those which (like the V-2) were essentially wingless missiles. This did mean, though, that there was a fundamental division between the two activities.

The whole operation was coordinated through the Forschung Fuhrung (literally meaning research-guidance) division, generally known as Fo-Fd. Its team of four scientific chiefs was always on hand for discussions with the Berlin powers and the degree of co-ordination effected between research and requirements was great - too great, as it turned out, for changes of emphasis at governmental level were often rapidly transmuted into a sudden alteration in a research programme which, whatever might be argued about its short-term expediency, cannot have done any good at all to the progress of the overall effort.

And finally, acting as the workhorse of the whole machine, there were several Anstalt establishments under the supervision of a director who controlled the several separate units in each institute. The Fo-Fu had laid down a policy on the establishment of such institutes, which laid stress on congenial fraternal control, good living standards, and a dignified working environment; plenty of finance and material backing and an opportunity for the frequent exchange of ideas on the interdisciplinary basis so necessary for effective furtherance of high-rate research.

The Zentralstelle fur wissenschaftliche Berichterstattung (Centre for Scientific Records) acted as a centre for the co ordination of publications of new discoveries. All scientists - even those working in secret fields - like to see their work in print, and numbers of reports were produced and circulated to personnel who were involved. A number of special yearbooks were instituted to bring the recognition of leading scientists to the attention of their more distant colleagues. Much was done to raise morale and efficiency - and it paid off handsomely in many respects. So, come to that, did the positions held by the scientists: salaries equivalent to $5,500 (£1,830) were paid annually to a typical research-worker, and that was worth vastly more in Germany at that time than it seems to be in today's terms.

Let us take a look back at the kind of surroundings that these scientists worked in - they were remarkable, even by today's standards, and have a distinctly James Bondian aura about them.

On the outskirts of Braunschweig lay a large area of woodland, surrounded, in the more open countryside, by a few scattered farm buildings. At least, that is how it appeared to aerial reconnaissance. But this innocuous little corner of Germany was actually something quite different - underneath the camouflage. This was the Luftfahrtforschungsanstalt Hermann Goring, the Goring Aerial Weapon Establishment, and it was one of the leading centres of top-secret developments. None of the central buildings was visible from the air, as they were all below tree level and the branches of the forest covered them completely. There were at least forty secret weapons establishments in this one unit, most of them devoted to the improvement of armour and the testing of ballistic projectiles. A large supersonic wind tunnel was built, and - for topographical reasons - the air intake had to be on open ground. So the German specialists erected a dummy farm-house to occupy the site, complete in every detail; and on one end (where the air intakes were) was a small out-house. Its roof slid sideways in its entirety to reveal the jet ducts when the device was going to be in use, and then they were quietly and unobtrusively slid back again after wards, leaving the supporting beams standing rather conspicuously along side. But no-one ever noticed.

And so it was that this immense establishment was erected and kept in full operation throughout the war without anyone knowing about it; two bombs did fall near the site during the entire war, but they were errors on bombing raids aimed at the town nearby.

At Ruit, eight miles or so from Stuttgart, another such institute (also named after a leading aviation leader) was established, the Luftfarht forschungsangstalt Graf Zeppelin; but this had more of the traditional appearance of a German research centre. As such it was soon located by Allied Intelligence, and bombed.

This institute was basically concerned with the then new science of aerodynamics. Models of secret weapons - rockets, missiles, and so on - were tested under extremely sophisticated conditions.

At Peenemunde an immense establishment was erected at a cost of over $120,000,000 (£50,000,000) to house, eventually, over 2,000 scientists. They were there to study rocketry, and particularly to build the A-series which gave rise to the V-2 (or A-4, as it was known to the scientists). The centre was built on an island at the mouth of the Oder, now the border between East Germany and Poland, but at the time still in Germany itself. The island is called Usedom and to fly over the area today, as I have recently done, demonstrates how unlikely it was that the British reconnaissance authorities would ever show much initial interest in the site as a centre for top-level secret developments. It was too far out from the centre of things: too much out on the limb. And the scattered buildings that did show up on routine pictures were quite typical of settlements dotted all over the German countryside. But this was where much of the most revolutionary of all the secret weapon development was centred. At the far north of the small island were the main test area and launching pads; along the coast lay the production plants and at the south of this stretch were the personal quarters of the staff. Behind this area were the barracks housing the military in the region.

Some almost routine bombing was carried out in 1943, when much of the area was shattered; but the main guidance control systems building - where much of the most vital research was going on - escaped undamaged. Even so, over 800 of the people on the island were killed when the raid took place, in the middle of August. After this, it was realised 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 twenty-four miles south of Munich. This was christened Was serbau Versuchsanstalt Kochelsee (experimental waterworks project) and gave rise to the most thorough research centre for long-range rocket development that, at the time, could have been envisaged.

They built a wind tunnel in which the air speed could be raised to the order of 3,000 mph, far better than anything else envisaged elsewhere in the world at that time. To many scientists the very idea of such an air velocity would have seemed impracticable without a vast fan unit to propel it: but the Kochel team designed instead a system which made the atmospheric pressure do the work for them. They constructed a vast pressure vessel of nearly 10,000 cubic feet and equipped it with a fairly powerful exhausting pump. In this way it could be reduced to near-vacuum in a very short while. At the moment that the test was to take place, a valve was opened admitting the atmosphere through an experimental chamber one and a half feet across and the model projectile inside was photographed during a whole range of air speeds, to show exactly how it would behave; and small pressure tubes were situated all over the models, flush with the surface, to measure the pressure changes produced by supersonic flight. The results were not perfect in some respects (for instance, there were problems of erosion of the chamber by the high-velocity air-flow, and-because it was working in a partial vacuum - the chamber was always below air pressure and this in itself introduced discrepancies of a minor order).

The Kochel apparatus was, then, a supreme example of advanced apparatus; yet in one respect 'at least it suffered from a fault often found in German war-time secret research. This was a simple lack of effort in the field of making instruments for taking experimental readings: the pressure tubes, for example, ran to small u- tubes filled with fluid. During a test, a dozen or so technicians would cluster around, all taking notes feverishly and memorising what took place. At no time, apparently, did anyone make an automatic plotter to do the job mechanically so that the recorded results, drawn on a roll of paper, could be examined later; indeed no-one even thought of taking photographs of the tubes for examination and accurate interpretation afterwards.

This failure to provide good instrumentation for experimental work is often clear from a perusal of the reports of the time. However this did not apply to the apparatus for the test itself, which was always of a high quality. The shock-wave photographs at Kochel, for example, were taken by the most sophisticated apparatus specially developed by companies such as the Zeiss organisation.

So good were the results that the Germans envisaged an even better tunnel, with a peak air velocity of 8,000 mph; they were going to construct a tunnel through more than a mile of rock to an industrial reservoir several hundreds of feet higher than the establishment itself; the water pressure, they felt, would drive high -speed turbines and produce a positive air flow of the order required. But this tunnel was never built before the war came to its end.

Even more grandiose in some respects was a gigantic tunnel, twenty -five feet across, capable of working at up to the speed of sound which was under construction at Otztal, Bavaria, when the war ended. Here too turbines driven by falling water from a nearby source were to have been the motive force for its operation.

Much useful work was done in ballistics at the Technische Akademie der Luftwafe - the technical academy - under Schardin, one of the leading ballistics experts of the time. There were altogether thirteen institutes in the Akademie, covering subjects as diverse as physical arid mechanical sciences, aircraft performance and control, and the performance of engines. It also carried out much definitive work on the functioning of explosives in shaped charges: depending on whether the charge is flat, spherical, or concave, the effect of the blast of a given amount of contact ex plosive can vary enormously - this is how it is that the slow, ponderous shell of a bazooka can blast a hole through the armour of a heavy tank.

This, then, was where the research was done. The conditions and pay were excellent, morale was high, and results were widely acclaimed. Not only that, but the deployment of this varied, vast conglomeration of facilities was intelligently done in view of the war situation, and the ingenious camouflage employed for many of them, the false buildings and sliding roofs, kept their work and even their existence a complete secret - not only to the Allies, but indeed even to the Germans themselves. Such a set-up is ideal for the furtherance of secret work, and the German secret weapon programme pressed steadily ahead as a result with incredible and in some cases devastating results.

A Room 101 Interview with Keith Chester: Author of Strange Company - Military Encounters with UFOs in WWII

2011-06-05T17:21:00.004+08:00

Almost every book I've ever read dealing with UFOs seems to start with either Kenneth Arnold's June 24, 1947 sighting, or the early July 1947 Roswell Incident. Sometimes there's a brief mention of the foo fighters from WWII too, and better researched histories might mention the ghost aircraft of WWI or even the phantom airships that made headlines across the United States in the late 19th century. But Keith Chester's Strange Company- Military Encounters with UFOs in WWII is the first book I've come across that exclusively deals with pre-1947 sightings. What follows is an interview with Keith Chester about his unique book and research.

Richard Thomas: Just wanted to start by saying thanks for doing the interview, I remember your appearance on BoA: Audio back in 2007 and you've been on my list of people I'd like to interview for a while now. I know your book Strange Company mainly focuses on "military encounters with UFOs in WWII" and it's slightly off topic, but with the recent passing of Zecharia Sitchin what's your take on the ancient astronaut hypotheses, that is that aliens have been visiting the earth for thousands perhaps even millions of years and might have even played some kind of major role in mankind's genetic and/or technological evolution?

Keith Chester: Richard, glad we're communicating with one another. I have entertained the ancient astronaut hypothesis since the late 1960s, when I was first introduced to the topic by Erich von Däniken's work, especially after seeing the 1973 documentary, In Search of Ancient Astronauts. That film really got me thinking and I remember being fascinated by the possibility that Earth had been visited by extraterrestrials. I didn't start reading any of Sitchin's works until the late 1980s. It was his scholarly approach that attracted my attention. It seemed he had taken the subject matter to the next level. Whether Sitchin interpreted his research findings accurately, I don't know. But, for me, that really does not matter. The ancient astronaut hypothesis was one of the first subjects I discovered as a kid that excited me about the unknown. It was one of the first times I remember learning of such an idea. It inspired me to think outside the box. More importantly, it was responsible for my interest in the UFO phenomenon, of which I'm still passionately interested in studying. I have a very open mind regarding such concepts. That said, I must point out, however, it is important to keep myself grounded by a dose of healthy scepticism, and not fall prey to unfounded faith and belief systems. So, the ancient astronaut hypothesis can't be ignored.

The Battle Of Los Angeles is making Hollywood History

2011-06-05T17:19:00.002+08:00

A Hollywood Blockbuster, A Hollywood B flick and the Real Documentary

Mission Hills, CA (PRWEB) February 18, 2011

On March 11, 2011 and March 15, 2011, there are two Hollywood films being released. Battle: Los Angeles, a 100 million dollar film and Battle Of Los Angeles, which is being called a "Mockbuster" film.
The third film being made is Jose Escamilla's "The Battle of Los Angeles." This fact filled documentary reveals the truth of the early morning of February 25, 1942, which is the story premise behind the two Hollywood films.
In Jose Escamilla's film, you are taken back to experience the Battle as it occurred. Over a million people witnessed our military firing at a huge UFO that hovered over Culver City, California for more than an hour and a half. The searchlights, the sirens and the military barrage against the Mystery Invader caused more damage to the neighborhoods below, than to the visitor itself. Thousands of rounds of anti-aircraft shrapnel were fired at what was described as being a five hundred foot in diameter craft from another world.
The UFO traveled slowly all the way down to Long Beach and it was assaulted again by military fire at Fort MacArthur still remaining unscathed by the fire power. The UFO headed southward toward Seal Beach when it suddenly darted back to Culver City. It again remained motionless above the communities below while the military opened up another barrage of fire. The UFO then hovered a half hour before flying away over the Pacific Ocean never to be seen again.
There were other occurrences that early morning. While the huge UFO was being attacked, many eyewitnesses reported seeing Mystery Planes high above in many parts of the skies over Southern California. These mystery planes numbered from ten to as many as fifty, that were coming in from the Pacific Ocean and being lit up by searchlights. Some of these mystery planes were silver in color and appeared like airplanes, but were traveling much faster and had a mysterious look to them. These mystery planes were also under attack. Ironically, there have been no records of any of the UFOs ever firing back.
The Battle of Los Angeles changed the lives of thousands of people that night. The details surrounding this incident make it the single most heavily documented UFO Case in the history of UFOs. This was the first time "a weather balloon" was used as an explanation by officials. This was the first time Official Denial was put in motion by authorities. This was the only time a UFO sighting was seen by Californians on a massive scale.
Jose Escamilla is currently in production on the film.
You can learn more about the movie, its release and view the movie trailers by visiting the Official Web Site for the film. http://TheBattleofLA.com

Iron Sky Teaser 3 – We Come in Peace!

2011-06-05T17:18:00.000+08:00

Here is the third teaser for Iron Sky, titled “We Come in Peace!”. Several blogs have been quick to point out, that in addition to peace the space nazis come in gigantic airships full of flying saucers. Which they seem to think is rather suspicious…
There’s is also another surprise in store for the future: We have a release date and it’s 4.4.2012! So it’ll be 11 long months and Iron Sky will finally see the silver screen. I can’t wait.

Panzer 88: Writer/Director Peter Briggs

2011-06-05T17:17:00.000+08:00

At the time of our coverage of the 2009 American Film Market, "Hellboy" writer Peter Briggs spoke with us about his Roman Lovecraftian monster flick "Mortis Rex", announced then as being produced by "The Mummy" franchise producer Jim Jacks. During that interview with us, Briggs casually let slip about another project he was working on..."Panzer 88".

Yesterday, "Panzer 88" was announced across the world through Hollywood's trade papers. And, more startlingly, it's being produced by a genre legend: Gary Kurtz. The man who rocked the world with "American Graffiti"...and then blew it away with "Star Wars", and its even more-impressive follow-up, "The Empire Strikes Back". Considered by many to be the greatest sequel ever filmed. Sobering stuff....

For Kurtz to be allied to a project, clearly it has to be something special. In true Bloody Disgusting fashion, we grabbed Briggs for some exclusive "B-D" low-down about this enigmatic project.

BD: Okay. First of all: what type of horror film IS this?
PETER BRIGGS: Well, now. That's an interesting question. Every single filmmaker always sits down and tries to convince their audience they're doing something that's never been done before. It's understandable. It's hype. They have to do it...mostly because they're trying to Snake-Oil the audience. Well...in this case, I think we're seriously doing something that HASN'T been done in quite this way before. And, I think that's what grabbed Gary's interest in the project from the outset. He wants to show you stuff that hasn't skipped across your retinas before.

BD: So, it's a period piece?
PB: Yes. "Panzer 88" is, at the end of the day, a supernatural horror/action movie set during World War 2. Specifically, it takes place in October 1944. And when we locked down that particular date, which we had to do for logistical reasons within the script, and also to ensure that a lot of the military hardware we referenced within the story was actually deployed in the field at the time...we went to immense pains to ensure that everything that happened in our movie -- troop movements, real-life character events, the whole ball of wax -- were one hundred percent accurate to real events. And then, what happens to our fictional characters within that milieu, fantastical as our story is, seems contextually more plausible.
There've been a bunch of WW2 flicks in a kinda-similar-but-not-really mould over the years. Of course, I wrote "Hellboy", which deals with Nazi super-science in the same era. I love that whole mythology about the Ahnenerbe that Mike Mignola tapped into for "Hellboy", and I have a few other projects in that particular vein that I'm seriously, seriously dying to do.
But that's not "Panzer". Our antagonist isn't a product of super-science. The closest analogy I can give here for "Panzer 88" is "The Keep", but that's still a misleading reference. We have a lot of creepy things happening to our characters...and a lot of fairly exciting action set-pieces. But that solemn, plodding pace of "The Keep"? It's really so not.
BD: And is it a creature movie? Or something different.
PB: No, yes. We're definitely a creature movie. Our heroes in this movie are like the guys in (Wolfgang) Peterson's "Das Boot". They're not Tarantino's over-the-top "Inglorious Basterds" goose-steppers. I want people to see the (human) characters in this film, and feel for them -- like Carpenter did in "The Thing" -- that they're just a bunch of poor blue-collar guys, who happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. A little like "Alien". Without bashing you over the head with it, we take pains to reinforce that the Wehrmacht -- the German army -- were really not all fevered Nazis. It's like saying that guys from the South of the U.S serving in the American military are going to be K.K.K. members. Simply nonsense. These aren't stereotypes...these are human beings we're attempting to portray here.
BD: Okay: so, how is this a creature feature, then? How is it different, say, to your other movie; "Mortis Rex"?
PB: That's a good point. "Mortis" has a creature that is...fairly bloody terrifying. "Mortis" exists within a Lovecraft-like universe. When Jim Cameron talked about "Avatar", being a "Games Changer"...that's how I feel about our "Mortis Rex" beast. When that thing ("Mortis Rex") comes out, it's going to scare the crap out of people. I think...I hope! I showed the (Paul) Mendoza concept art for it recently to an FX house who were preparing a rival bid on the project, and they were thrown for a loop. There simply hasn't been anything seen on-screen like "Mortis" before. It's...formidable. That's all I can say.
In "Panzer 88", our creature is still very cool, but it's more grounded and accessible. Imagine the baddest thing that came out of "Lord Of The RIngs". You remember how the Balrog was impressive and scary in "Fellowship" when it went up against Ian McKellen? And how great the War Trolls in "King" were when they Blitzkrieged into battle? Well, a combo of both those is what our "Panzer" beast is like. Its tangible, and massively formidable. And not dumb. It's thinking, and reasoning, and from the outset -- within the first 5 minutes of the movie, when you see WHY it's reasoning -- you absolutely understand and empathize with its drive.
Unlike our "Mortis" beast, our "Panzer" nasty will be seen onscreen for protracted chunks of time. You're really, seriously going to want the action figure of it. I kind of daydream about having a Sideshow sculpture of it.

BD: So, you talk about "milieu". Why Germans, in Russia? In awesome tanks? Just because it's cool?
PB: Yes! Don't you think? Next question...
BD: Be serious.
PB: I was! C'mon! Alright...no. To answer that, we have to go back to the genesis of the piece. My two co-writers, Aaron Mason and Jim Cowan, wrote their original script a decade ago. Their story was much simplified back then. It wasn't even a genre piece...it was literally about a Tiger 1 tank that broke down in the snow. End of story. Tensions run high, and cabin fever, essentially, sets in. Which was still a cool idea. Then they decided that it was missing a genre element. And when they decided to put in a creature with the story...literally, all of the little building blocks, for them, seemed to drop down into place.
So, Aaron and Jim had this script which they blindly sent out. And, thanks to the Gods of Moviedom, it landed on the late, great mega Oscar-winning Stan Winston's desk. And Stan off "Jurassic" and everything else that was wonderful that was coming out of his ideas factory in the Valley, was really smoking. And Stan just fell in love with Aaron and Jim's baby. He seriously wanted to make this movie. And there was an effort to make it happen, but ultimately it didn't come together. I don't know why, but thank God for me...the rights were available.
Aaron and Jim are interesting guys in their own right. Aaron has a very smart kids book with his writing partner on that, Doug Warr: "The Bafflegagging Blundernagging Brothers In: Curse Of The Bog Frog" --and, yes that's quite a mouthful! -- that's won three national children's books awards, and it looks like it's about to be picked up in the next weeks as a "Shrek"-esque movie by a pretty major genre producer. Like Gary, Jim is an ex USC alumni -- the last time we met with Gary, they swapped anecdotes about the film school. Jim's being running Gallery Morpheus for years, publishing some of the great fantasy artists, like Wayne Barlowe ("Avatar") and H.R. Giger ("Alien")
BD: So, how did you find this script?
PB: In a very funny way. There's a little mixer once a month in Los Angeles, we call Comic Book Sunday, run by a mutual friend of Aaron and myself called Ben Jackendoff. Anyway, I went along there, and there was this guy with a cool H.P. Lovecraft T-shirt, and I commented on it. Well, that was Aaron.
Now, I never read people's scripts. Ever. Because they always suck, and when friends ask you to read scripts they've written...well, I've had friendships go cold because I've been honest about them. But a few beers down, Aaron asked if I would read a script he'd written. I usually say "no", but I'd already been entertaining another idea I'd had set in World War 2, and I was curious. I read it in one sitting in the garden, and at the end of it I groaned, because I knew I'd have to make it!
The plot was fairly solid...in fact, even after revisions, it's still essentially the same story, almost all the same characters. What I did was punch up the dialogue, rework a little of the structure. And add and beef-up the various set-pieces. If you've ever read any of my drafts, you know my set-pieces get fairly elaborate, and "Panzer 88" is no exception.
BD: So how did Gary Kurtz get involved? The man is a legend in the industry. You must be pretty excited?
PB: Like you wouldn't believe. "Star Wars" is the reason I got into the movie industry. If you've ever read an interview with me, I make no bones about the fact "The Empire Strikes Back" is my favourite movie of all time, period. So, to have Gary love and be enthusiastic about this movie? It's beyond words.
At the end of the summer last year, I had to spend more time in London than I thought. I ended up having a meeting with Gary, and he asked me about what I was working on. I went through the list of projects I had: there was one that he loved, but it was still early days on that. And then there was also "Panzer 88". And he sparked up immediately. And that really was that. When we decided we were going to do it, we had financiers instantly attracted to the concept, literally almost overnight. It was a total mirror-replication of "Mortis Rex". To see lightning strike twice was very peculiar.
BD: Can you talk about the design ethic, the look of the movie?
PB: Well. Outside of all the supernatural material -- of which there's a lot -- there are two solid tank battle confrontations, done in a way that I don't think I've seen on film before, even looking at movies like "Kelly's Heroes" or "Battle Of The Bulge". We have one wonderful depot sequence with a lot of hardware...experimental German ground vehicles, a flying wing. All actual machinery that was deployed in the field at the time, but has never been seen onscreen. And a significant part of the film takes place on the "Gustav", one of a pair of monster guns...the largest railroad cannons in the world that the Germans built. The armor nuts are going to love this movie. We have a wonderful producer in Germany, a big World War 2 enthusiast, who's helping us -- informally, at this juncture -- to get together hardware for the film.
This is a very, very ambitious film for its budget. I'm carrying around my Moleskine sketchbook and drawing like crazy for my FX house. There's quite considerable greenscreen shoot involved here, on top of our miniatures unit. I'm having a real blast doing my little scribbles on this one. I pulled my creature guy, Paul Mendoza, temporarily off "Mortis Rex" as soon as we got rolling. I talked a little about Paul to Bloody Disgusting a few months ago, but he's fairly amazing. He's worked in the movie biz on projects like "Death Becomes Her"; sculpted toys such as the Mandarin Spawn for McFarlane; done beautiful busts like Barlowe's Decurion for Sideshow. I drew up the initial renders for our creature in my notebook: Paul's toiling hard to make him look even more cooler.
BD: Creepy or bloody: what should we expect?
PB: Creepy, definitely. There's a lot of mood and tension here, especially in the first half. Bloody? Hmm. Several of the characters meet quite grisly and bloody ends. But, it's not slasher-movie gratuitous; I think it's pretty balanced. The gore-hounds will see more of that in "Mortis Rex".
BD: When are you shooting?
PB: Well, I do have this other movie as well! (Laughs) It could very well be that "Panzer" gets shot before "Mortis". It's a faster shoot: a good quarter to a third of it takes place inside the King Tiger tank, in a claustrophobic environment. A lot less characters to deal with. But there are a LOT of effects shots in "Panzer".
BD: Thinking beyond this or "Mortis" yet?
PB: Oh, God. All the time. The question is not finding a project to do...it's deciding on which one's next. I have too many. I have a big outer space epic I've been wanting to do for about a decade. There are a couple of comic book properties I desperately want to start chasing: two of them at Marvel. I've another World War 2 story, another factual Roman story outside of "Mortis Rex". A genre piece set during the Indian mutiny…and another set in Victorian London, that Gary is also keen on. In fact, Aaron and I had a meeting yesterday for another very, very big L.A. based producer, on an adventurous movie that's sort-of a throwback to those flicks from the early 70s. So...I guess it's "Watch This Space" time. But as of now…I have two movies to go make. It's pretty daunting. But pretty exciting, too.

Nazi Skull

2011-06-05T17:16:00.002+08:00

A crystal skull believed to have occult powers that was part of a treasure trove of architects held by S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler has been unearthed in Germany.

The skull, found resting in an attic in the roof of a house in a small Bavarian village, has excited treasure hunters who say it was with a list showing it was part of a larger trove of booty once owned by the most sinister man in the Third Reich.

Early indications are that it is part of a series worshipped by ancient Mayan cultures in what is now Mexico which, legend has it, are vital to stop the world from ending next year.

The Mayans believed that after a ‘Great Flood‘ destroyed Atlantis, the survivors wished to preserve their wisdom. They shaped thirteen crystal skulls; nine were coloured and represented the races of men and four were as clear as glass to represent ``the beasts that walk, crawl, slide and fly."

They were then sent to their place of "birth" until such a time when all are needed to avert the catastrophe that man will wreak on the planet.

The Mayans were a race of highly gifted astronomers and mathematicians.

Using their knowledge of planetary and galactic progressions, the Mayans were able to record a time and date for this ‘end of days‘ - the winter solstice, 21st December 2012.

Himmler, who ran the modern industrial-scale murder programme of the Jews, was also spellbound by myths and legends all his life. He financed expeditions to far-flung corners of the earth by Indiana Jones-type S.S. men seeking proof of the supremacy of Ayran man - ie, the Germans.

The skull, which weighs nearly 20lbs, is of the same design as the death’s head which adorned the uniforms of his killers. It was found in a wooden and leather box in the home of an old lady and it is now in the hands of Swiss journalist Luc Burgin.

With it, it is claimed, was a list of 35 treasures which the S.S. was seeking to bring back to Germany from Sudetenland on the border with Czechoslovakia as the Reich crumbled in 1945. Part of it reads;"Nr. 14; the crystal skull - 263-2 RFSS Collection Rahn, No 25592, leather case, crystal death‘s head, South America."

RFSS referred to Reichsfuehrer-S.S. - Himmler‘s official title in Nazi Germany While Rahn referred to Otto Rahn, an S.S. officer and chief occultist for Himmler who has been described as as the inspiration behind the Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, although neither George Lucas nor Steven Spielberg have never spoken of him.

Burgin says he is commissioning experts in the coming weeks to examine the skull to try to prove its authenticity. He said; "I am 99 percent sure that this is one of the skulls of the Mayans, but we need clarity and all available tests will be carried out to ascertain authenticity."

A footnote on the box stated; "Do not open! The personal property of the Reichsfuehrer-S.S.!"

The old lady who handed it over in a village near Munich was once married to a high ranking S.S. officer.

The full details of the booty on the list found along with the skull haven‘t been revealed but are thought to include details of S.S. silver rings worth 50 million pounds in today‘s money.

They are said to be buried in the hills surrounding the eerie triangular-shaped castle of Wewelsburg near Paderborn. Himmler used the castle as a Black Camelot for his knights-of-the-dark-side.

As the Reich crumbled he abandoned Wewelsburg. Some 9,280 special S.S silver rings struck for his men, and returned on his orders to him after death, were stashed in secret cave in the nearby hills.

Book Review: The World Hitler Never Made

2011-06-05T17:15:00.002+08:00

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-German@h-net.msu.edu (February 2006)

Gavriel D. Rosenfeld. _The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism_. New Studies in European History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xii + 524 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $30.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-84706-3.

Reviewed for H-German by Andrew Stuart Bergerson, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Amazing Tales

Whether literary, popular or scholarly, the vast majority of alternate
histories about the Third Reich have been produced in the Britain and the
United States (p.15). Gavriel Rosenfeld's encyclopedic survey of "what if"
narratives includes fictional literature, mass media and even counterfactual
histories written by academic historians and professional journalists. He
uses evidence from biography, context, hermeneutics and reception in
considering these largely marginalized cultural products in order to draw
fascinating generalizations about trends in postwar memory.

In the 1940s and 50s, the works themselves were few and far between; but
some were quite popular and they all served triumphalist purposes. By
positing the horrific outcomes of alternate scenarios (for example, a Nazi
victory creating hell on earth), these works legitimized Britannia's "finest
hour" and US interventionism by criticizing the policies of appeasement and
isolation. After the 1960s in Britain, and the 1970s in America, the number
of alternate histories dramatically increased, but their content tended to
"normalize" the Third Reich. In the wake of the "Hitler Wave," the feared
figure of a fugitive Hitler ("He's alive!" [1]) cast the F?hrer as more
human; his supposed successful flight made it seem unlikely that he would
find justice. His absence from history no longer seemed to assure a better
world. (Understandably, given the ways in which they might be misunderstood,
Germans did not initially produce alternate histories, but they were rabid
consumers of Anglo-American ones.) Given the persistent commitment of some
readers and viewers to the earlier, more "narrow spectrum of
representational boundaries," as well as the tremendous popularity of many
of these "allohistories" despite negative reviews, Rosenfeld views the
production of these new alternate histories as evidence of a regime of
public memory that had become "more pluralistic, contested, and divided"
(p.25). By indexing, criticizing and periodizing these rich sources in
postwar remembrance, Rosenfeld has opened new terrain for scholars of
memory.

Yet a more significant contribution of this book lies in Rosenfeld1s attempt
to define normalization (esp. pp. 15-25, 392-395). At times, Rosenfeld uses
normalization to refer to the teleological shift in any posttraumatic society
towards an ideal-typical condition of normality. As they began to produce
more of their allohistories, particularly after reunification, Germans
increasingly demonstrated a yearning for this state. Normalization also
refers to the process by which a particularly extraordinary and/or vivid
historical legacy becomes viewed, treated and remembered like any other.
Here Rosenfeld identifies various interpretive techniques: universalization
(typically liberals warning the contemporary world of the persistent threat
of fascism), relativization (typically conservatives who see more of a danger
in communism), aestheticization (those who use Nazis for entertainment),
humanization (those who aim at normalizing perpetrators) and humor
(most surprisingly as practiced by Germans who, for good reason, preserved
the taboo against laughing at the Nazi past for the longest [p.382]). These
strategies amount to "the waning of a moralistic perspective towards the
past" whereby a "dominant moralistic view of the past" is challenged by
dissenting authors and readers with "views that are less committed to
perceiving it from an ethically grounded vantage point" (p.16).

This shift was caused not just by instrumental attempts to ignore the Nazi
past but also by "organic" normalization and "presentism" (pp. 17, 385-366).
Rosenfeld describes the pattern of gradual normalization that includes, but
is not reduced to, prescriptive attempts to pursue normalization intentionally
for polemical purposes (p. 372). Almost universally, the authors who lived
through Hitler's war wrote allohistories with the intent of reminding their
readers of the horrors of National Socialism. With less fear in their hearts
at the Nazi past (p. 380), postwar authors were more willing to think outside
_that_ box. More concerned after the 1960s with a present than a past evil,
authors who engaged in normalization used the Nazi past instrumentally to
criticize Western imperialism, the corporate-minded BRD, or promote
anti-Communism. According to Rosenfeld, alternate histories of the Holocaust
tend to suggest the "futility of remembrance" (p. 367), particularly when part
of an obligation for public remembrance as in Germany. Rosenfeld is
wonderfully ecumenical in showing that all this criticism emerges from both
left and right.

To be sure, Rosenfeld's own analysis demonstrates the political nature of
alternate history even during the crucial first decades. Already in the
1940s and 50s, the Nazi past was used to constitute moral communities by
legitimizing or delegitimizing the postwar order. Morover, framing these
allohistorical fantasies (testing one's moral fibre against the Nazis) in
national meta-narratives suggests that to a large degree it was those
national myths that were at stake: Britain1s "finest hour," "heroic"
American interventionism, and "ordinary" Germans. During the Cold War
(1945-58), "[w]estern fears of communism kept alternate histories of Nazism
to a minimum" (p. 24), just as the rediscovery of Nazi evil in the wake of
Adolf Eichmann1s trial only served to reinforce Allied self-confidence.
Then, a series of economic, social and international crises challenged
national prestige in each country. Humiliated by the Suez Crisis of 1956,
abandoning their colonies and facing recession and new social movements,
the British lost their sense of moral authority, and, at the same time, they
began to imagine British collaboration with a victorious Nazi Germany. For
the Americans civil rights, OPEC, Vietnam and Watergate led to similar
reexaminations. The inverse is the case for the vanquished Germans after
they regained their national self-confidence in and around reunification.
Rosenfeld correlates shifts in alternate histories with the tides of
national self-confidence that are then projected laterally, as it were, onto
alternate histories of the Third Reich. (My personal favorite is the wave of
allohistorical silence that took place during the Thatcher era [p. 70-1].
Rosenfeld's deft interpretation relies not on the alternate histories
written but on those _not_ written: itself a form of counterfactual logic.)
To be sure, Rosenfeld is able to provide concrete biographical or
hermeneutic evidence that national self-confidence was a primary cause of
these meta-narrative shifts only in certain cases (as on p. 81).
Nonetheless, Rosenfeld convinces the reader through his comparison between
these national cases--for it must be more than coincidence that the
differential timing of this shift in each national case corresponded closely
to the particular crisis of that nation.

Since this shift did occur in each case, however, there seems to be an
overarching cause that transcends national uniqueness: Rosenfeld might have
called this a postmodern fracturing of the modern subject (cf. p. 7). Facing
a Nazi past remembered less for its own sake, less as a unique phenomenon,
and viewed even with downright "apathy" (p. 200) for memory as such,
Rosenfeld recognizes that "increased exhaustion, if not outright boredom,
with moralism" (p. 392) may represent a taboo-breaking backlash, initiated
by pop-cultural allohistories against the representatives of high culture,
who repeatedly affirm the established orthodoxy. Nonetheless, Rosenfeld
repeatedly invokes the "modern" "injunction" to remember the Nazi past lest
we be doomed to repeat it (pp. 367, 375, 378). For the most part, Rosenfeld
treats normalization in modern terms: as a loss of ethical clarity, a shift
away from "an ethically grounded vantage point" to "a less judgmental
approach to the past" (pp. 17, 60, 87, 234, 334). He tends to refer to
remembrance, atonement, memory and the "profound moral implications" of the
Holocaust (p. 345, 372) as proper things to which one is either "committed"
or not (p. 201) as if these terms are set and things with clear "limits" (p.
368), rather than the subject of continual debate even today. Furthermore,
Rosenfeld does not specify what these limits might be, nor does he
historicize those limits. Similarly, Rosenfeld's labels for these periods,
as eras of "moralism" and "normalization," imply that ours is a less moral
(if not amoral or completely immoral) age (p. 23, 375). In short, his
posture presumes that the modern paradigm for ethics is in fact ethical.

At other times, Rosenfeld defines normalization in postmodern terms as an
attempt to challenge the hegemony of that particular paradigm for memory (p.
342). For instance, he claims that cold war alternate histories expressed a
"manifestly" moral perspective (p. 18) that held a "privileged" status
(p.17; see also pp. 24, 94). This definition of normalization sometimes
seems to include a notion of ethical complexity that befits the postmodern.
Rosenfeld argues that the popularity of Robert Harris's _Fatherland_ (1992)
reflected both a "less morally informed view" of the Third Reich in Britain
as well as a more "nuanced" view (p. 87). In all of this, Rosenfeld is being
true to the facts: the postwar period did hear voices insisting on both
ethical postures and it did witness a shift from the one paradigm to the
other, with all the contentious debate associated with the postmodern turn.
Yet Rosenfeld tends towards the modernist take on remembrance. He admonishes
the reader that abandoning "black-and-white" ethical judgments can lead to
ignoring the ethical conundrums entirely: "The long road of normalization,
thus, may well point to indifference, if not amnesia, as its ultimate
destination" (p. 22). He admits that challenging hegemonic moral paradigms
might lead to more accurate histories and may even represent a healthy
process of democratic debate. Yet for Rosenfeld, the dangers of
allohistories are too many too soon: diverting our attention from the
"actual past," confusing readers, or distorting, trivializing, even
condoning the Nazi past (pp. 392-394).

If even the best alternate histories are "flawed" (p. 361), then Rosenfeld's
reader is left unsure how precisely allohistorians should deal with the Nazi
past. A good number of the authors Rosenfeld examines were committed to
"good-vs.-evil" narratives not because they wish to ignore the dangers of
fascism but precisely because they were convinced, and wished to convince
others, that fascism (and not communism) represented the real threat to
humanity. At the same time, Rosenfeld provides examples of how one can use
allohistory to confound ethical categories in order to think more seriously
about the ethical challenges of the Nazi past.[2] Reading his extensive
survey, one is impressed by the vast array of narratives that have served to
exculpate or repress Nazi crimes: the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic, the
explicitly or the implicitly ethical, the personal and the impersonal,
humanizing and abstracting, black-and-white and nuanced. I certainly believe
that there are good reasons for lucidly analyzing ethical complexity, paying
close attention to the lives of the perpetrators and even universalizing
Hitler: one could use them to help fight fascism (cf. pp. 269-270, 372). The
real lesson here is that there is no one correct formula for combining form,
narrative and epistemology to write good (that is, antifascist) allohistory.

Allohistories are particularly well suited for raising these ethical
dilemmas when they pose the question what if "It Happened Here?" (the title
of a book by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo [1964]; pp. 56-8). Yet the
desire to ignore these ethical dilemmas began long before 1945. Perhaps
sensing this issue, Rosenfeld begins his survey in the years just prior to
the war, when some British and Americans hypothesized as to the consequences
of continued appeasement and non-intervention. These are some of the most
fascinating parts of Rosenfeld's story because they suggest that alternate
histories were already polemical--and thus helped shape Nazi history in the
first place. It is common knowledge that the Nazi regime used counterfactual
histories of all sorts to mobilize support for the regime, the war effort
and the genocide. Indeed, some historians would argue that this tradition of
alternate history began with the Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs. Rosenfeld's
study thus raises the possibility of the presence of a longer
allohistoriography of modern Germany--including literature and criticism
(fictional and factual) since the late nineteenth century--that demonstrates
the longitudinal continuities between normalization efforts in response to
the Third Reich and the cultures of normalcy that produced it in the first
place.

Let me mention just two more compelling reasons to read Rosenfeld's
path-breaking survey of postwar alternate histories of the Third Reich. Some
of the sources scrutinized by Rosenfeld are counterfactual essays by
academically trained historians. Rosenfeld entices the reader when he
alludes to the fact that allohistorians struggled with the same theoretical
questions as historians. Either out of convenience or conviction, the former
seemed to presume that individuals make history, so that they can easily
alter its course for the purposes of speculation by killing off Hitler, for
instance, or enabling him to live. Yet some explored the possibility that
underlying structures might have preserved true historical outcomes
nonetheless: such as German national character. The fascinating interplay of
intentionalism and structuralism in postwar allohistories is enough to make
any German historian take notice (pp. 272-329). Rosenfeld also alludes to
the possibility that formal qualities in allohistory might in themselves
encourage us to think in new ways: by raising questions that contradict
"reality" as it happened, as we have been wont to remember it, or as
historians have constructed it (pp. 244, 396-397). By dint of alternate
history's very position on the margins of our discipline, then, Rosenfeld's
allohistoriography offers new insight into the epistemological foundations
of modern (and postmodern) history.

Notes

[1]. Rod Sterling, _The Twilight Zone_, 1963.

[2]. Such as Madeline Bunting, _The Model Occupation: The Channel Islands
under German Rule_ (New York: Harpercollins, 1995); Adrian Gilbert, _Britain
Invaded: Hitler's Plans for Britain: A Documentary Reconstruction_ (London:
Century, 1990).

Indiana Jones' Adult years 1921 - 1990s

2011-06-05T17:14:00.000+08:00

Late 1936:
Government agents intercept a communiqué from Cairo to Berlin believed to be send by Abner Ravenwood. Indy is consulted, since he has had past dealings with Ravenwood, and is asked to investigate the Nazi dig. He learns that they are looking for the headpiece of the Staff of Ra so that they can locate the Well of the Souls, the resting place of the lost Ark of the Covenant. Indy beats the Nazis, both to the headpiece and to the Well of the Souls. Ravenwood's daughter, Marion, becomes Indy's partner in the adventure and together they find the Ark. Belloq shows up again to steal the Ark for the Nazis (he is their lead archaeologist) but is killed when he opens the Ark to get the tablets containing the Ten Commandments. The Ark is placed into storage in a secret government warehouse somewhere in Washington.
(Raiders of the Lost Ark)

Late 1936:
Indy joins the "gateway project" in England, investigating a crystal cylinder discovered within a Stonehenge monolith. Indy works with an English woman, Professor Karen Mays, but the Nazis are also after the secret of the discovery. Indy and Karen discover that the cylinder is the key to a dimensional gateway. The Nazis steal the cylinder and try to summon the beings from that dimension, but Indy and Karen stop them by destroying the cylinder.
(Marvel comic #4-5 - Gateway to Infinity)

Late 1936:
Indy recovers a Piute summoning stone stolen from the National Museum by a ring of international artifact thieves, led by Ian McIver, with whom Indy had previously tangled over some tablets in Bangkok. In retrieving the stone, Indy also gets a map dealing with the movements of a clan of people called the Shintay, who supposedly split off from Atlantis. Indy and Marion travel to Cameroon in West Africa and head into the Congo. They meet a group of Nazis led by Colonel Vogel and Ian McIver, but all are captured by the Shintay, who explain that they were banished from Atlantis because they worship death while the Atlanteans revered life. Vogel tries to take a crystal power orb and destroys the entire Shintay citadel leaving only Indy, Marion, and McIver as survivors.
(Marvel comic #7-8 - Africa Screams)

READ MORE

The OMEGA File HITLER ESCAPED!

2011-06-05T17:12:00.002+08:00

I remember hearing, in the 1950s, rumors that Hitler had escaped to a secret Nazi base at the South Pole. In 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower said: "We have been unable to unearth one bit of tangible evidence of Hitler's death. Many people believe that Hitler escaped from Berlin."

When President Truman asked Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam conference in 1945 whether or not Hitler was dead, Stalin replied bluntly, 'No.' Stalin's top army officer, Marshall Gregory Zhukov, whose troops were the ones to occupy Berlin, flatly stated after a long thorough investigation in 1945: "We have found no corpse that could be Hitler's."

The chief of the U.S. trial counsel at Nuremberg, Thomas J. Dodd, said: "No one can say he is dead." Major General Floyd Parks, who was commanding general of the U.S. sector in Berlin, stated for publication that he had been present when Marshall Zhukov described his entrance to Berlin, and Zhukov stated he believed Hitler might have escaped. Lt. Gen. Bedell Smith, Chief of Staff to Gen. Eisenhower in the European invasion and later Director of the CIA, stated publicly on Oct. 12, 1945, "No human being can say conclusively that Hitler is dead."

Col. W.J. Heimlich, former Chief, United States Intelligence, at Berlin, stated for publication that he was in charge of determining what had happened to Hitler and after a thorough investigation his report was: "There was no evidence beyond that of HEARSAY to support the THEORY of Hitler's suicide." He also stated, "On the basis of present evidence, no insurance company in America would pay a claim on Adolph Hitler."

Nuremberg judge Michael Mussmanno said in his book "Ten Days to Die," "Russia must accept much of the blame [to the extent that it still exists] that Hitler did not die in May 1945." However, Mussmanno STATED that he interviewed Hitler's personal waiter, his valet, his chauffeur, his two secretaries, pilots, top generals, etc., and they all 'agreed' perfectly that Hitler committed suicide. He said they could not have gotten together afterward and made up a story that agreed in perfect detail without one flaw anywhere, so they must be telling the truth and he was absolutely convinced that Hitler committed suicide. The story at first sounds convincing, until you realized that they could have memorized a story BEFOREHAND and these were all people who almost WORSHIPPED Hitler. Do witnesses EVER agree "perfectly" in detail in real life?

Former Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes in his book "Frankly Speaking" [as quoted in the April 1948 "The Cross and The Flag"]: "While in Potsdam at the Conference of the Big Four, Stalin left his chair, came over and clinked his liquor glass with mine in a very friendly manner. I said to him: 'Marshal Stalin, what is your theory about the death of Hitler?' Stalin replied: "He is not dead. He escaped either to Spain or Argentina.'"

I still have the September, 1948, issue of a magazine called "The Plain Truth" with the headline article: "IS HITLER ALIVE, OR DEAD?," subtitled: "Here is summarized the conclusions of an exhaustive three-year investigation -- together with reasons for believing Hitler may be alive and secretly planning the biggest hoax of all history."

Another article in November, 1949, says "The Nazis went underground, May 16, 1943!" and details a meeting at the residence of Krupp von Bohlen-Halbach, the head of I.G. FARBEN, etc., at which they planned "FOR WORLD WAR III."
Another article in August, 1952, entitled "HITLER DID NOT DIE," subtitled "Adolph Hitler's fake suicide in his Berlin Bunker now is exposed as History's greatest hoax! Positive evidence comes to light that Hitler did not die -- here's new evidence that Hitler is alive, directing [the] Nazi underground, today!"

The June, 1952, issue of "The Plain Truth" is headlined: "HITLER 'May Be Alive!'" The article states: "Now, NEW FACTS, or purported facts, leak out. It's reported now that in 1940 the Nazis started to amass tractors, planes, sledges, gliders, and all sorts of machinery and materials IN THE SOUTH POLAR REGIONS -- that for the next 4 years Nazi technicians built, on an almost unknown CONTINENT, Antarctica, the Fuhrer's SHANGRILA -- a new Berchtesgaden."

The report says they scooped out an entire mountain, built a new refuge completely camouflaged -- a magic mountain hide-a-way. The recently discovered continent is larger than Europe -- 5,600 miles from Africa, 1,900 miles from the southern tip of South America, 4,800 miles from Australia.

It is NOT a mere ice-covered surface, but a real continent, with plains, valleys, mountain peaks up to 15,000 feet. The temperature in the interior is around zero (?) in the summer, and never drops below 20 or 30 degrees below in the winter. In other words, it is not as cold as in parts of North Dakota or Canada." (especially underground, where the natural temperature would be in the 50's, even below snow and ice. - Branton)

"Bonjour" magazine, the "Police Gazette," and the Paris newspaper "Le Monde" all had articles about Hitler's South Pole hideaway. Admiral Doenitz, in 1943, stated, "The German submarine fleet has even now established an earthly paradise, an impregnable fortress, for the Fuhrer, in whatever part of the world." Although he did not specify where the exact location was, "Bonjour" pointed out that in 1940 Nazi engineers had begun construction of buildings that were to withstand temperatures to 60 degrees below zero.

There have been strong rumors, from the end of the War, that Hitler escaped to the South Pole. Yet, most people simply REFUSE to believe the evidence, the idea that Hitler survived the war is just unacceptable! It is too upsetting to too many people!

There is plenty of PROOF that the Americans and Russians LIED about what happened to Hitler, and there are strong rumors that he escaped to Antarctica. There is ample proof that a major group of Nazis escaped to Argentina. What do YOU think? Why did Admiral Byrd lead an "invasion to Antarctica," and why the extreme secrecy about the whole situation?

In 1981, Donald McKale wrote "Hitler: The Survival Myth" to try to lay to rest the questions about what happened to Hitler. The flyleaf says: "In this book a distinguished historian examines the postwar world's most absorbing and persistent mystery, revealing why it has endured and where the mystery leads" [emphasis mine]. The back flyleaf says "Absolute certainty about what happened still eludes us today."

Just recently on TV there are STILL programs telling "at last, the final, once and for all, this is the real story" about what happened to Hitler, yet they all do not really answer the question. A recent TV program, called "What Really Happened to Adolph Hitler," after investigating numerous stories, ends by saying that, in spite of Glasnost and the new freedom of access to Russian files, the files on Hitler are still some of the most highly classified items of the Soviets.

The "Diario Illustrado" of Santiago, Chile, January 18, 1948 issue, said: "On 30th of April, 1945, Berlin was in dissolution but little of that dissolution was evident at Templehof Airfield. At 4:15 p.m. a JU52 landed and S.S. troops directly from Rechlin for the defense of Berlin disembarked, all of them young, not older than 18 years.

"The gunner in the particular plane was an engineer by the name of B... whom I had known for a number of years and for whom I had endeavored to get exemption from military service. He sought to tank up and leave Berlin as quickly as possible. During this re-fueling interval Mr. B... was suddenly elbowed in the ribs by his radio operator with a nod to look in a certain direction.

"At about 100-120 meters he saw a sleek Messerschmitt Jet Model 332 [an editorial comment says this should be an ARADO 234]. Mr. B.. and the radio operator saw, and WITHOUT ANY DOUBT WHATSOEVER, standing in front of the jet, their Commander in Chief, Adolf Hitler, dressed in field-grey uniform and gesticulating animatedly with some Party functionaries, who were obviously seeing him off.

"For about ten minutes whilst their plane was being refueled the two men observed this scene and around 4:30 p.m. they took to the air again. They were extremely astonished to hear during the midnight military news bulletin, some seven and a half hours later, that Hitler had committed suicide."

On a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program called "As It Happens," September 17th, 1974 at 7:15 p.m., a Prof. Dr. Ryder Saguenay, oral surgeon from the Dental Faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles, said that Hitler had ordered a special plane to leave from Berlin with all medical and dental records, especially X-rays, of all top Nazis for an unknown destination. He said that the dental records used to identify Hitler's body were drawn from MEMORY by a dental assistant, WHO disappeared and was never found.

An editorial in "Zig Zag," Santiago, Chile, January 16, 1948, STATES that on April 30th, 1945, Flight Captain Peter Baumgart took Adolf Hitler, his wife Eva Braun, as well as a few loyal friends by plane from Tempelhof Airport to Tondern in Denmark [still German controlled]. From Tondern, they took another plane to Kristiansund in Norway [also German controlled]. From there they joined a SUBMARINE convoy. ["U.F.O. Letzte Geheimwaffe des III Reiches," Mattern, pp. 50-51.]

The Jewish writer Michael Bar-Zohar in "The Avengers," p. 99, said: "In 1943 Admiral Doenitz had declared: 'The German U-boat fleet is proud to have made an earthly paradise, an impregnable fortress for the Fuhrer, somewhere in the world.' He did not say in what part of the world it existed, but fairly obviously it was in South America."

The German writer Mattern said that Admiral Doenitz told a graduating class of naval cadets in Kiel in 1944: "The German Navy has still a great role to play in the future. The German Navy knows all hiding places for the Navy to take the Fuhrer to, should the need arise. There he can prepare his last measures in complete quiet."

FOURTH REICH

2011-06-05T17:11:00.002+08:00

The collapse of the THIRD REICH in 1945, unfortunately, did not mark the end of FASCISM or NATIONAL SOCIALISM as political ideologies. Thousands of Nazis linked to WAR CRIMES and genocidal actions during the HOLOCAUST escaped prosecution at the end of World War II. Some, like ADOLF EICHMANN and JOSEF MENGELE (and perhaps MARTIN BORMANN), escaped to South America with the aid of ODESSA and other underground networks. Others, including KLAUS BARBIE, were adopted by the U.S. government as anticommunist allies under PROJECT PAPERCLIP. Countless others were simply ignored by postwar German authorities, resuming their normal lives as entrepreneurs, politicians, even police officers and judges. Ambiguous evidence and Russian intransigence raised doubts in many minds as to whether ADOLF HITLER himself had really died in 1945.

Considering the global losses suffered during World War II, it is entirely natural that freedomloving people everywhere should fear the rise of a “Fourth Reich” in Europe (or anywhere else). In the past half-century, those fears have been exacerbated by a variety of trends and events, including:
1. The slow leak of revelations, from the latter 1940s to the present day, exposing war criminals who slipped through the net in 1945, including some who settled in the United States and others who were actively employed by U.S. government agencies.
2. The survival of prewar fascism in “neutral” Spain until 1975, accompanied by the rise of neo-fascist military juntas (most supported, if not created, with U.S. aide) in nations ranging from Greece to Central and South America.
3. The proliferation of neo-fascist groups in Europe from the 1950s onward, including organizations in Germany (where any display of pro-Nazi sympathy remains a criminal offense) that were seemingly sheltered by sympathetic police and prosecutors.
4. Reports from Nazi outposts, such as Chile’s COLONIA DIGNIDAD, where old-school fascists put down roots in the bad old days and have flourished (often with local government protection) ever since.
5. The reunification of Germany in 1990, followed by new waves of neo-Nazi skinhead violence against minorities and increasingly belligerent activity by various far-right political parties.
6. The collapse of Soviet communism in 1991. Though long a goal of anticommunists worldwide, the USSR’s dissolution only exacerbated Russia’s economic crises while clearing the way for organization of neo-fascist groups in the mold of those found throughout Western Europe.

It seems unlikely, at first glance, that Hitler’s Reich will ever rise again, and yet students of history recall the conditions that brought Hitler to power in 1933: economic crises, obsessive fear of “enemy aliens” coupled with demands for “national security” at any cost, erosion of constitutional liberties by crusading leaders, and a final acceptance that “war is the health of the state.” Those problems still exist, and if as some suggest that the would-be “saviors” of the nation have traded their brown shirts and jackboots for thousand-dollar suits, the disguise only makes them more dangerous.

Rudolf HESS, (1894–1987)

2011-06-05T17:09:00.002+08:00

Rudolf Hess was born at Alexandria, Egypt, in April 1894, the son of a prosperous German exporter-wholesaler. He lived in GERMANY from age 14 and volunteered six years later for military service in World War I. Wounded twice in combat, he emerged from the army to join the right-wing Freikorps, a mercenary force employed to crush communist uprisings in postwar Germany. He also joined the Thule Society, a group of anti-Semitic occultists prominent in National Socialist circles. Hess joined the Nazi Party in July 1920 and three years later participated in ADOLF HITLER’s abortive revolution. In prison, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to Hess and soon ranked Hess among his closest friends. When Hitler seized power in 1933, he named Hess Deputy Führer, the third most powerful man in Germany (after Hitler and Hermann Göring). Subsequent titles bestowed upon Hess included Reich Minister without Portfolio, member of the Secret Cabinet Council, and member of the Ministerial Council for Reich Defense. In 1939 Hess was even designated to be Hitler’s successor after Göring. Because of his bashful and unassuming nature, however, Hess was sometimes overshadowed by his nominal subordinate, MARTIN BORMANN.

On May 10, 1941, with World War II well underway, Hess boarded a Messerschmitt fighter plane that had been fitted with extra fuel tanks and embarked from occupied France on a 900-mile flight to Great Britain. His alleged intention was to meet the Duke of Hamilton (a brief acquaintance from the 1936 Berlin Olympics) and negotiate peace between England and Germany prior to Hitler’s impending invasion of RUSSIA. Hess navigated within 30 miles of the Duke’s home near Glasgow, Scotland, and then bailed out of his plane at 6,000 feet and parachuted into a Scottish farmer’s field. British authorities dismissed the unauthorized peace plan and clapped Hess in prison, while Hitler denounced Hess as a mentally unbalanced traitor. In 1945 Hess was returned to Germany as a defendant in the Nuremberg trials. He received a life sentence for WAR CRIMES and remained in Spandau prison until 1987 when he allegedly committed suicide at age 92.

Hess’s flight to Scotland was so strange that it inevitably spawned a host of conspiracy theories. Nearly two decades after his death, doubts still linger concerning his mission, his motive—and, indeed, his very identity. Some conspiracists claim that Hess was in league with a clique of British Nazi sympathizers who planned to seize the government and dictate peace terms favorable to the THIRD REICH. Others maintain that the real Rudolf Hess never left Germany, but rather that a doppelganger made the flight and subsequently maintained the charade for 56 years without blowing his cover. Dr. Hugh Thomas, a consultant surgeon in the Royal Army Medical Corps during 1970–78, looked after Prisoner Number 7 at Spandau and insisted that the man jailed there was not Rudolf Hess. (An alternate doppelganger theory claims that Hess did fly to Scotland himself but died in custody before war’s end and was replaced by a look-alike volunteer.) Some scenarios add a twist at the end, suggesting that “Hess” planned to reveal his true identity in 1987, whereupon he was murdered by custodians at Spandau to ensure eternal silence. Various alleged cohorts of Hess in his far-fetched peace plan died during World War II in a series of “accidents” that easily might have resulted from sabotage. British authorities, naturally, deny any knowledge of such a conspiracy.

Polar Hitler

2011-06-05T17:05:00.000+08:00

The specially-designed badge or emblem of the Deutsche Antarktische Expedition 1938-1939. The Swastika and oak-leaves clearly reveal Thule Society paternity.
Though easily overlooked, the investigators of National Socialist history have been able to perceive the many references to this ice-ridden facet of the Third Reich among Hitler's myriad, far-ranging interests, even during his early years as an unknown, starving artist. By years of patient research, painstaking sifting of articles, books, pictures, manuscripts and eyewitness accounts, these investigators determined that Adolf Hitler, many years prior to his ascension to the Chancellorship of Greater Germany, had been keenly interested in the mysterious, last frontiers of this planet, the frozen immensities of the Arctic and Antarctica. Why Hitler was so interested in the Polar Regions is not immediately clear to the casual researcher, but it becomes so when one observes the recurrent convergence and congruence of two main themes:
(1) Decades before the advent of the present massive Soviet and Japanese exploitation of this precious resource, Hitler understood the importance of the whaling industry for the provision of protein and raw materials to the cramped population of Germany, always dependent upon its none-too-friendly neighbors for its food requirements above the subsistence level.
(2) The titanic drama of the polar wastes, where Nature's forces clash unabated—blizzards, hurricanes, jagged icebergs, volcanic fire and eternal ice, gigantic beasts; where brave and hardy men survived and more than this, overcame these obstacles in the quest for knowledge, risking their lives in frail boats or trekking determinedly across the glittering howling wilderness—this drama, with all its color, sound, fury and heroism appealed greatly to Hitler, the artist, the romantic disciple of Wagner and not least, to Hitler the anthropologist, who wished to rediscover the cultural heritage of his Nordic, Aryan ancestors. Was it possible, he wondered, that the frozen wastes demanded a race of heroes and so produced one, or was a race of heroes already in existence which found the harsh demands of this environment in keeping with its own virtues?

To answer these questions of existence, to rediscover his racial, hence, cosmic roots, the young, maturing Hitler studied the remnants of his ancient Aryan forefathers, the robust wisdom which may be found, for example, in the Nordic Sagas, untarnished by the fetid breath of Judeo-Christianity. Along this path of forgotten knowledge, Hitler encountered a radically different theory concerning the creation of the world: Paul Hoerbiger's "Welteislehre" theory, widely discussed in German intellectual circles.

In this quest for truth rooted in Nature and not in superstition, the young Hitler came into contact with members of the secret Thule Society which was very active in the Munich area. Interestingly enough, the logo or emblem of this society includes a. Swastika, a downward-pointing sword and a wreath of oak leaves, all frequently used symbols of the later National Socialist organizations.

The wisdom of the magnificent Aryan past was not all the Society had on hand, however. Many of its members joined with Hitler in his eleventh hour struggle to save EUROPE from a new Dark Age. Men such as Dietrich Eckhardt, Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Karl Haushofer (father of geopolitics) and other notables came to Hitler via this organization.

Whether Hitler was ever a member of The Society is not proven, but it is certain that he was a frequent guest and participant at The Society's gatherings after the end of World War I. It is significant that his association with this group preceded by some two years his overt involvement in politics.

The mere fact that the organization is called The Thule Society indicates its strong links with the Nordic Sagas and the Aryan World Philosophy. To illustrate the antiquity of the Nordic Culture, one need only mention that "Greenland" figures frequently in the ancient Sagas. Everyone knows that Greenland is nothing but a frozen wasteland covered almost entirely by eternal ice. However, geological core samples show that Greenland really was green and had a subtropical climate with an abundant variety of animal and plant life including mammoths and dinosaurs—before the last Ice Age, that is, 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Truly, the Nordic Racial Memory is a long one.

With such a basis of racial knowledge, as old as time and as young as spring, it is no wonder that Aryan youth like Hitler enquired and speculated upon such "legends" as the Lost Continent of Atlantis, even at the turn of the century. There was ample evidence to tantalize one's curiosity and stimulate one's imagination, although there was not the reinforcement for fantasy which is now available in films, radio and television.

Certainly, it would be a mistake to label Hitler's fantasies and conjectures about the Polar Regions as "idle", for time and time again history has shown that man's mightiest achievements are often the results of his imagination. The first Spanish explorers set out on their costly, often fatal voyages and treks, guided by nothing more than legends such as "The Fountain of Youth", "The Seven Cities of Cibola", "El Dorado" and the fantastic vision of a land called "California". On such imaginings was based the powerful and wealthy Spanish Empire and out of these "fantasies" came equally fantastic discoveries of new lands, new wealth and even new foodstuffs like potatoes and tomatoes. If Europeans had not been gifted with such imagination, they might still be living on a flat earth, clad in itchy woolen undergarments, with no remedies for their common ailments, like malaria, and very little variety in their diet, not to mention their thinking.

Nazi Bi-Polar

2011-06-05T17:02:00.002+08:00

A German supply ship, empty and abandoned, is discovered by the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter "Northland", somewhere in Greenland.

U.S. Coast Guard cutter "Northland" disabled and out of action following engagement with German forces off Greenland is aided by U.S. vessel "Eastwind".

German soldiers captured by American forces at a top secret weather and radio station near Little Koldewey Island. To Allied forces, it looked as if the Nazis were everywhere and nowhere.

German equipment and installations burn after massive naval bombardment. Many bases were set up in the Arctic region, fully-equipped and well provisioned. Where were the battalions who used such bases?

In this struggle for its very existence, Germany was at first victorious. Though a reluctant combatant, as proved by the "Blitzkrieg" of the early war years, Germany outmatched her opponents initially with her superior discipline and tactics. But, as Liddell Hart wrote in his brilliant history of the Second World War, the outcome was very soon decided. Germany's encirclement, her lack of resources in both raw materials and manpower threw time on the side of the Allies, or so they thought.

And now comes that nagging, festering thorn of doubt which remains to this day in the side of the supposed victors of World War II: Allied intelligence networks reported Nazi bases all over Greenland. At first, this information was doubted by the Allied High Command who suspected these reports as being another Nazi diversionary tactic, a "red herring" fresh out of Doctor Goebbels' rumor mills. Having been deluded into previous costly wild-goose chases by the wily doctor, the Allied military were not very enthusiastic at first in testing the veracity of the reports.

The Americans, however, with their typical exuberance, born of their usual fantastic surpluses of manpower and material, tried their hand at nipping the "Nazi rumor" in the bud. To their unpleasant surprise, the Nazi presence in Greenland was anything but a propaganda mirage. In one of the first pitched battles between German and American forces, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter "Northland" was knocked out of action by German fire and had to be towed to safety by the U.S. vessel "Eastwind".

Operation followed operation and U.S. forces found ample evidence of Nazi occupation. Gradually, they discovered a network of well-planned bases, ports, airfields, supply depots, radio and meteorological stations. In addition, frequent flights of Luftwaffe aircraft were reported over Greenland.

With standing orders to seize and destroy such installations, the Americans brought up all the manpower and firepower available, only to find the positions uninhabited, an indication that the previous occupants had advance warning of the Americans' arrival. No one knows exactly who warned them or how they were notified, but the warnings were effective, as only a handful of prisoners were taken.

Food stocks captured in the Nazi depots and supply dumps were found superior to the rations issued to the American G.I.'s. The soldiers and sailors who came across such supplies learned to appreciate the proverb, "to the victor belongs the spoils".

While the Americans spent the war years mopping up Greenland, the British were busy elsewhere. Some of the best British Commando Units were thrown repeatedly against secret Nazi bases in Spitzbergen. There was no end to it, it seemed.

Convoys of submarines were reported off the northern coast of Norway, coming from and bound for destinations unknown. Some of these cargo-carrying U-Boats were seen filling their holds in Germany, right up to the last days of the war, just as if business were going on as usual. Many of Germany's best mountain troops and officers, like Hitler's friend, General Dietl, were stationed in these far-northern areas, including Lappland. Obviously, Nazi Germany was up to Something Big, but what?

Was there a short-cut from the Arctic to Antarctica? Did the Nazi expeditions discover a more direct way to Antarctica via Greenland, Spitzbergen or the North Pole? Was this the reason for the Nazis' lavish expenditure of men and material in these regions before and during World War II? Did the Allies find out what the Nazis had discovered? Was this the reason for Admiral Byrd's massive military invasion of Antarctica in 1947?

The Chilean newspaper, El Mercurio, quoted Admiral Byrd as saying that he felt it imperative for the U.S. and its allies to ring both the Arctic and Antarctica with radar networks and to institute immediate defensive measures against attack from these regions.

Only time will tell us what really is up there or down there, or should we say, IN there?

Long Live the Frozen Fourth Reich!

2011-06-05T16:55:00.000+08:00

Hitler certainly agreed that time was on the side of the Allies in the immediate struggle—provided Nazi Germany remained as were the Allies, locked into the inherent limitations of their conventional thinking and technology. For Nazi Germany the path of salvation was clear: The Party which had provided radical and workable programs for the revival of the German economy and body politic must now provide the radically new and effective weaponry and strategic concepts capable of winning the long-term victory over an enemy whose only defense against an idea—the idea of National Socialism—was war. To this challenge Nazi genius was more than capable.

Among the major breakthroughs in the field of weapons systems were the new 'breed' of Nazi U-boats capable of transporting great cargoes of men or material over vast distances, travelling submerged the whole time. Such submarines as these were occupied in the all-important colonization and supply of Hitler's polar bases while time was being bought by the obsolete undersea craft which were fighting the battle of the Atlantic.

The fact that Hitler had a thorough grasp of the strategic impact of submarines on the course of naval warfare cannot be doubted, especially by the knowledgeable researcher. While Nazi Germany's surface fleet was largely used to decoy and distract Allied air and naval forces throughout the war, it was Nazi Germany's submarine fleet which was being used and developed most effectively, right from the beginning of the war in 1939. Nazi U-boats succeeded in mining most British seaports and estuaries at the outbreak of the war, while whole fleets of British ships sank beneath the waves—having fallen prey to U-boat torpedoes. As work proceeded on bigger and better U-boats, under Hitler's orders, the German surface fleet was virtually scrapped, including the almost completed aircraft carrier, the huge Graf Zeppelin.

Allied writers of the time believed that Hitler was "giving up" in view of the tremendous numerical superiority of surface vessels arrayed against him. Far from it! We see now that Hitler ordered the massive construction and development of U-boats knowing then—forty years ago—what the United States Navy has only admitted recently: that submarines are the strategic arm of naval forces and as such, have superseded the battleship and the aircraft carrier as the number one naval weapons system. But Hitler knew this 40 years ago. What a gap in development those decades can mean!

The Gatehouse

2011-05-31T18:00:00.004+08:00

LINK

Space Nazi Flick Iron Sky Goose-Steps Into Production

2010-12-18T11:06:00.000+08:00

Fourth Reich Group Portrait

In this Wired.com exclusive, Iron Sky cast members (left to right) Götz Otto, Peta Sergeant, Julia Dietze, Michael Cullen and Stephanie Paul gather at the Schloss Birstein castle outside Frankfurt, Germany.
After several years of preproduction, the Finnish filmmakers behind Nazis-from-outer-space flick Iron Sky are finally turning their fan-financed sci-fi fantasy into a reality.
It remains to be seen if the final product will live up to the wow-inducing Iron Sky trailers, which pulled in 8 million views before principal photography even began. But director Timo Vuorensola and his team have begun shooting their movie based on an outlandish story: Toward the end of World War II, Nazis fled to the moon in flying saucers. In 2018, they return to Earth seeking revenge.
In keeping with their DIY roots, the filmmakers launched a campaign to get their picture into theaters through the online Demand to See Iron Sky campaign. Producers also invite potential fans to pay what they want, starting at 1 euro (about $1.50) to grab a sneak peek of the film's first five minutes.
For an advance look at the movie's key elements, check out the concept art and new production shots in the gallery above.

Advanced Horten Prototype

2010-11-28T18:12:00.002+08:00

Model and Photos by Kunitaka Imai

Mauser Earth

2010-11-26T07:20:00.002+08:00

An introduction to MAUSER EARTH, the Weird War Chronicles.

The 20th century was still young when the 'Forever War' begun.

Alliances were forged and often betrayed... Within a decade most nations were involved in a global and deadly conflict, it seemed, would last eternally.

1938. The World has been at war for more than a quarter of century.

The Pacific Empire of Japan has established its reign of neo-feudal terror over most Asia and north-western American shogunates.

Following the lead of their new messiah, Grigori's fanatical crusaders from all over the Union of Soviet Theocratic Republics spread their new One Faith.

Thuleomancers of the Great Reich have unleashed their dreadful trench puppets and terrifying U-bots over Europe.

Super heroes of the British Commonwealth and United Free States of America, supported by their Newark alien allies, fiercely fight for democracy and freedom.

However, according to the H.O.P.E. Manifesto, none of these economical and mediapolitical empires actually means to achieve victory !

For war, as a system, serves their upper interests.

War prevents national collectivist and liberal democratic ideals and ideas from taking hold, meanwhile war supports industrial and economical development at the expense of all individual rights.

War is control. And as powerful as belligerent nations think they are, they all live in servitude for the Consortium and its secretive Directorate are actually the true masters of mankind.

The H.O.P.E. proclaims that time has come clear-sighted and determined heroes rise and make the difference between everlasting slavery and freedom.

Sternkrieg: 1949

2010-11-26T07:19:00.000+08:00

Welcome to the war that never was...

The year is 1949, but the world is not the place it should be! Welcome to Sternkrieg: 1949, a collection of designs, images and writings centering around the concept that World War Two did not end in 1945, but took an entirely different and dangerous direction, launching humankind into a desperate race for space.

WW2 in 1949? Hey! Didn't you take history!?

For those of you unfamiliar with this 'history that never was' concept, I suggest you take a look at what I consider the best novel on the subject, if only for the humor with which it is written; Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South describes an alternative ending to the American Civil War, based on the premise that white extremists from our own future use a time machine to travel back to the 1860's, and give the Confederacy AK47 assault rifles. Things don't go exactly as planned, however...

Sternkrieg: 1949 is a concept written with a similar concept in mind; someone is messing with the timeline, but the question is- who?

Well, I'm not telling.

Not yet, anyway...

Operation Pastorius

2010-11-26T07:18:00.000+08:00

In 1937, for example, during a visit to the factories of the Messerschmitt aircraft company in the southern German city of Augsburg, Hitler was presented with the prototype of a four-engine long-range bomber, the Messerschmitt Me 264, which was being designed to be able to reach America’s East Coast from Europe. The plane is shown here following a 1942 test flight.

A V-2 rocket is launched from the German army research center in Peenemünde in 1943. Scientist there also worked on a so-called “Amerika rocket,” a two-stage rocket designed to reach the United States.

Hitler's Unfulfilled Dream of a New York in Flames
By Eike Frenzel
Even before World War II, Nazi strategists came up with a number of plans to strike New York City -- whether with super missiles, kamikaze pilots, long-range bombers or secret agents. Some were ambitious and some were foolish, but all of them failed.
Captain Hans-Heinz Lindner was gradually losing his nerve. As dawn broke on June 13, 1942, the first cars were already driving along the waterfront in the village of Amagansett, Long Island. But the U-202 was stuck. The gray steel colossus lay perched on a sand bank in shallow water less than 200 meters (656 feet) from the shore, as helpless as a beached whale. In just a few hours, anyone who walked by would be able to see the German U-boat sticking up out of the Atlantic.
Lindner, though, managed to break free. Running the engines at full power, he was able to maneuver the submarine in a rising tide back out into the open sea. The U-202 slipped beneath the waves before anyone saw it. Below deck, the sailors celebrated their last-minute rescue.
That near-loss of one of the German submarines operating off America's East Coast was the prelude to one of Germany's most bizarre World War II military operations: the infiltration of a group of saboteurs onto American soil. The Third Reich aimed to hit America on the home front and Nazi strategists came up with a number of plans for costly attacks designed to rattle the bustling metropolis of New York to its core -- whether with super missiles, kamikaze pilots, long-range bombers or secret agents.
But the German spies brought to the enemy coast by the U-202 in the daring "Operation Pastorius" made little headway on their ambitious mission. Despite the German military's best efforts to select and train eight members of the terrorist team, the Nazi infiltration proved to be a spectacular failure.
Although all of the men had spent time in the United States prior to the operation, none had had any experience working for an intelligence service. In April 1942, they were sent to Gut Quenzsee, a town 75 kilometers (47 miles) due west of Berlin, for a crash course in sabotage. For 18 days, military experts drummed into them how to use explosives, timed detonators, guns and hand grenades. To stay fit, they practiced Jiu-Jitsu. Then, in June, two groups of four freshly minted secret agents each were dropped off on the coasts of Florida and Long Island, one by the U-584, the other by the U-202.

A Colossal Failure
The teams had been sent to America to blow up railroad bridges, power plants and tunnels, to paralyze industrial facilities vital to the American war effort and to demoralize the American civilian population. One historian has dubbed it "the most daring sabotage plans in history." But it turned out to be a major headache for their German superiors. The German agents blew their cover after a mere two days in the field, and prompted the FBI to launch its largest manhunt to date.
Primary responsibility for the espionage disaster lay with Georg John Dasch, the 39-year-old leader of the Long Island group. After having almost drowned during the effort to get on land with an inflatable raft, he was soon discovered among the dunes by the flashlight-wielding, 21-year-old Coast Guardsman named John Cullen. When Cullen first came upon the sopping wet Dasch, the latter pretended to be a fisherman. Then, Dasch grabbed Cullen by the collar, threatened him and eventually jammed $260 of would-be hush money into his hand. In return, Cullen was supposed to immediately forget about the four men he'd seen on the beach.
Of course, the suspicious Coast Guardsman did nothing of the sort. He immediately informed his comrades, who would eventually dig up four crates of explosives and some German uniforms that had been hastily buried in the wet sand. The FBI was also alerted, and a feverish search for the four strangers began.
The four took a train to New York City, where they checked into a hotel. Soon afterwards, Dasch traveled to Washington, D.C. where he turned himself in on June 19. To prove he was a spy, Dasch showed FBI agents tissues on which he had written down his targets in invisible ink. Later described by the interrogating police officer as "neurotic," Dasch divulged every last detail of "Operation Pastorius" to the Americans. Using the information, FBI agents rounded up the three spies in the New York hotel as well as the four German saboteurs who had landed in Florida.
On August 8, 1942, the short careers of six German spies came to an end in the electric chair of the District of Columbia jail. The sentences of the other two, Dasch and Ernst Peter Burger, were commuted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to 30 years and life in a US prison, respectively.

Hitler's Dream of New York in Flames
In faraway Germany, despite the failure of the sabotage mission, Hitler was still obsessed with the idea of seeing New York in flames. As he saw it, his mighty opponent on the other side of the Atlantic had to be forced out of the war by several well-placed attacks on the home front. As Hitler's favorite architect, Albert Speer, recalled in his "Spandau Diaries," Hitler took great pleasure in watching films in the Reich Chancellery of "London burning," of "exploding convoys" and of a "sea of fire over Warsaw." Hitler was intoxicated with the idea of "the downfall of New York in towers of flames."
Given Hitler's enthusiasm for striking at New York, it's no surprise that Nazi strategists developed several plans for just that, some of which even pre-dated the war. In 1937, for example, during a visit to the factories of the Messerschmitt aircraft company in the southern German city of Augsburg, Hitler was presented with the prototype of a four-engine long-range bomber, the Messerschmitt Me 264, which was being designed to be able to reach America's East Coast from Europe.
Hitler was thrilled about the idea of an "Amerika bomber" whose explosive cargo could reduce US cities to ash and rubble. But what he didn't know was that the Me 264's designer, Willy Messerschmitt, had actually shown him a mock-up that wasn't capable of flight in order to win a lucrative contract -- and no one could really say when the aircraft would be ready to be put into operation.
When it starting looking like they would lose the war, the Nazis started putting a lot of hope in developing so-called "miracle weapons." The army research center at Peenemünde, a village on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom, was a cornucopia of such ideas. The same center that had more or less successfully fired the first V-2 rocket in 1942 was supposed to be able to finally launch an "Amerika rocket" by the time the war ended.
The A-9/A-10 rocket was designed to be 25 meters (82 feet) long, or about 10 meters longer than the V-2. Weighing nearly 100 tons, it was engineered to climb to an altitude of 24 kilometers (15 miles) before beginning its trans-Atlantic flight toward the United States. Another research group aimed to allow a pilot to steer the rocket and eject just before it reached its target -- a veritable suicide mission.
In theoretical terms, at least, the destructive ingenuity of German engineers knew no bounds. They toyed with the idea of having submarines pull floating containers holding modified V-2 rockets to America's East Coast. Once in position, the containers would have been flooded in a way that made the rockets point straight up out of the water, clear for launch.
The development Nazi military technology was only made possible through the brutal employment of forced labor. Workers died by the thousands in underground production facilities and secret factories. But there were also many volunteers who -- for the sake of the success of the "America weapons" -- would have been willing to die a miserable "hero's death," even if it meant steering rockets launched from carrier planes kamikaze-like into downtown New York.

Scarce Equipment and Amateurish Agents
In the end, all the high-flying attack plans of the Nazis only had one thing in common: none of them were put into action. In December 1941, the American magazine Life published a sketch of the Big Apple under a headline about how Nazi planes could bomb New York. In 1944, the same publication quoted New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia as saying there could be a German missile strike on the US. But, in the end, neither an "Amerika bomber" nor a long-range Nazi missile was ever to appear on the New York skyline.
More than anything, it was Allied bombing raids on German factories that persistently delayed the development of trans-Atlantic attack capabilities and, as the war went on, made them impossible. A shortage of materials, a lack of time and the sheer volume of new engineering projects worked to prevent the fulfillment of Hitler's dream of seeing America go up in flames.
When it comes to the amateur agents involved in "Operation Pastorius," it's more than likely that they would have eventually blown their cover, even if Dasch hadn't defected. Indeed, from the very beginning, the mission was ill-fated: One of the agents had already ducked out of it after having contracted gonorrhea in Paris. And, in the United States, Edward Kerling, the leader of the four-man team in Florida, reportedly boasted to an old friend there about his secret mission. And Herbert Haupt, a member of Kerling's team, even visited his father in Chicago and asked him to buy him a black Pontiac sports car -- claiming he needed it while travelling on business for the German government.

Vergeltungswaffen - Game

2010-08-20T14:25:00.000+08:00

Introduction

Vergeltungswaffen is a Wargame/Roleplaying campaign based on NUTS and ATZ from THWG. I've put up a group of five players, each controlling a distinct "faction", as explained later. The setting is WW2, and the first game is set in 1943.

The Neu Victorious Reich...

2010-07-28T16:07:00.001+08:00

Science Channel CGI rendering

Mutungsgerät - Strahlenkanone

2010-07-28T16:04:00.000+08:00

Science Channel CGI rendering of the Strahlenkanone of Oberst d L Schröder-Stranz, an incredulous X-Ray Destruction Beam Weapon backed by a desperate Heinrich Himmler and the SS late 1944 to early 1945. Note the artist has used the Karl Morser chassis as basis of his rendering.

Iron Sky Film

2010-07-26T15:48:00.000+08:00

The Story of Iron Sky

Towards the end of World War II the staff of SS officer Hans Kammler made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity.

From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late ‘45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right.

Now it’s 2018, the Nazi invasion is on its way and the world is goose-stepping towards its doom.

About the Film

Iron Sky is a science fiction comedy being produced by Blind Spot Pictures and Energia Productions in Finland, and co-produced by 27 Films in Germany and New Holland Pictures in Australia. At the moment, the production is gearing up with costumes being made, sets designed and plans being finalized. Shootings will begin at October 2010 and they will take place in Germany and Australia. After the shoot we will enter a year long post production process.

The primary language of the film will be English with worldwide distribution, through theaters and via the Internet. If you are interested in joining in the production of Iron Sky, please visit our page at wreckamovie.com or join the community!

Himmler's efforts to turn sand into gold

2010-07-21T20:10:00.000+08:00

SS chief Heinrich Himmler set up a secret unit in the Dachau concentration camp after becoming convinced he could turn sand into gold, a book has claimed. Letter to Himmler from Oswald Pohl, recommending Karl Malchus and "alchimistischen Unternehmen" .

His personal alchemist was a man named Karl Malchus who convinced Himmler he could make the metal.

Gold was vital for the Nazi regime in Germany to use to buy armaments and technology from abroad. When Himmler was approached by the scientist in 1937, after the regime had been in power for four years.

The book, Hilter's Alchemists – The Secret Attempts to manufacture gold in Dachau, by academic Helmut Werner, is the first account of this extraordinary confidence trick pulled on one of the most murderous individuals who ever lived.

Mr Werner, who has written previous works on the history of alchemy, said it was possible that Malchus himself may have been working for British intelligence when he received the go-ahead to begin his bizarre quest in a barracks at Dachau in 1938.

"He was living in England up until the first months of that year and on his return made contact with Himmler about his unique talents – but of course, it was all a huge swindle," he said.

Himmler was enthused about the project after minute nuggets of gold had been found in the rivers and streams of Bavaria. He was introduced to Mr Malchus through the office of Oswald Pohl, the SS administrator of the concentration camps.

Himmler met with Malchus who told him that a process involving paraffin, stones and the soil from the bed of the Isar River in Munich "will allow me to produce gold in abundance for the future and security of the Third Reich".

Malchus was the second charlatan who spellbound Himmler with tales of turning base metal into riches. The first was Heinrich Kurschildgen, a charlatan who also claimed to be able to make petrol from water.

Himmler eventually had him imprisoned in a concentration camp for fear he would turn him into a laughing stock. But this bruising encounter with alchemy did not put him off financing Malchus when he came his way in 1937.

"Malchus got whatever he wanted and Himmler installed him in Dachau, not as a prisoner but as a technician whose work could be carried out in secret," said Mr Werner.

As part of the experiments all participants were searched to make sure that no gold was smuggled in that could be claimed later to have been manufactured from dirt.

But Malchus hid gold nuggets in his cigarettes, allowing him to claim they were the result of his experiments.

His scheme was eventually rumbled and Mr Malchus remained in Dachau for several months as a prisoner before being released on pain of death if he ever spoke of his relationship with the SS chief.

Ludwikowice - "The Henge"

2010-07-08T18:42:00.001+08:00

The Henge

In 2001, a new book titled "The Hunt for Zero Gravity" written by noted British author Nick Cook was released. Soon it turned into a best-seller, because it proved to be a very successful and entertaining mixture of an investigational report about certain Black Projects, weird technological and scientific background information and - of course - it all linked up with rumours and hearsay reaching back to Nazi Germany and their widely 'known' Wunderwaffen.

A good part of the book, deals with rumours about German made "Foo Fighters", which allegedly were seen over German territory by Allied aircrews during the last months of WW II. Within this context, Cook comes up with a Polish investigator named Igor Witkowski, who himself wrote several books about secret places and technologies of the German Wehrmacht. It was Witkowski then who told Cook about a place in the region formerly known as the "Sudetenland" or Lower Silesia, a region on the outskirts of the Mountains of the Polish-Czech border which belonged to the Reich until the end of the war. According to Witkowski, some German special troops, a 'Spezial Kommando' consisting of highly capable scientists and lead by SS officers, were working on an apparatus which might have been the prototype for an anti-gravity device during the last months of the war. And according to Cook, this perfectly matches with the rumour of sightings of those "Foo Fighters", which allegedly were able to manoeuvre outside the known limitations of normal physics, that is hovering at high altitude and next extremely accelerating and rapidly changing flight direction like no known airborne machine was able to do it at that time and - even today.

I'd like to point out here that Mr. Witkowski was unable to produce any evidence so far, regardless of the several times I have asked for them via email. So all that we have are his claims about those WW II records about the SS Officer Sporrenberg, as he wrote in the book "The Truth about the Wunderwaffe", published by himself. The place where this device was tested for the last time was in an abandoned mine next to the small Polish village Ludwigsdorf, nowadays called Ludwikowice. Witkowski claimed that his source of information was a written report or protocol of a Polish court, at which a SS Officer named Karl Sporrenberg was found guilty of several crimes that he had committed while he was in charge of the aforementioned SS special troops. During that trial, Sporrenberg allegedly provided very detailed information about the group of scientists and their fate (all 62 of them were supposedly executed as the Red Army was closing in on the area around Ludwikowice) and the device (which probably was shipped to Norway as a last resort).

In his book, Cook described how he and Witkowski visited the site in Poland, and even provided pictures showing the location.. In August 2005, I was stationed with an Air Force unit north of Berlin and about an hours drive from the German-Polish border, and decided to make that 600 km trip to see what I could find out. Due to the detailed description in Cook's book, I was able to find the place myself. This is my report.

Quest for "The Henge"

I left very early at 4 AM, and the German Autobahn was almost abandoned. Around Berlin, the traffic increased slightly, telling me that the German capital was about to awake. After Berlin, the sun appeared over the horizon, and I had a breakfast break somewhere around Cottbus, which is already close to the Polish border.

On the Polish side, the Autobahn turned into a 70 km road construction site, which stressed not only my nerves but also my back as well due to innumerable pits and cracks. At 10 AM as I was approaching Walbrzych, I noticed the beautiful landscape of the area in front of me. I pulled over to the road's shoulder and got out of my car. While the countryside, which I had crossed for the last hours was relatively flat and sparkled with large corn fields between grass land, the outskirts of the tree-covered tops of the "Riesengebirge" were right in front of me. Before World War II, this area used to be a part of the German Reich, and 4German-speaking farmers were living all over the place. Later, during the war, many of the coalmines located within the mountain region were used as production facilities for the Wehrmacht, hidden within the woods and not to be found by reconnaissance aircraft. Beside ammunition plants, even some parts of the Wunderwaffen , for the well-known V2 rocket weapon, were built here. I expected to soon find some traces of those military activities while entering the hillside, and I was right.

"Bunker Hill"

After Walbrzych with its crowded streets, I continued on narrow asphalt lanes winding up and down between the hills and it was hard to not lose orientation, because my 'navigation system' was a standard road map and many of the small villages that I passed on my way to Ludwikowice were not even mentioned in it. The ride continued and about 11:30 AM I passed the sign indicating the beginning of "Ludwikowice" village limits. I was finally there. But Ludwikowice is just a narrow but very long village, located on both sides of a small road coming from nowhere and going nowhere, as it seems.

I slowed down and followed the main street through Ludwikowice, gazing to the left and to the right and trying to find a hint where to go next. Not until another two kilometers, when I saw the next road sign, indicating the end of the village. I turned my car and drove back where I came from. Next I tried some of the rising small roads that occasionally emerged from the main street and led into the tree-covered hills around Ludwikowice. One of those caught my interest as the road was not made of asphalt like all the others that I had passed; this one was made of concrete and it was like those I had seen in old WW II and modern military installations many times before. The road was about 2.5 meters wide and made of single concrete elements, about 2 by 2.5 meters and still in good conditions after 60 years. I entered the road and slowly climbed the serpentine hills. After about a half kilometer, I noticed the first evidence of military installations, which was the typical round top of an ammunition bunker, with the doors on the opposite side of the road and a small concrete way going around that hill from both sides.

About 50 meters away, there were a second and a third ammunition bunker of the same type, and on the downhill side of the road, I caught a glimpse of a concrete-building that turned out to be a harden office or storage building.

I spent some time sweeping the area to get an impression of the building complex, then I decided to continue the search for what was the main reason for coming here - the "test-rig" as Witkowski called it. I will refer to it as "The Henge".

I returned to the main street and realized that I would not find the place I was looking for without further guidance. I had packed my car with a tent and some food supply, just in case it would be required to stay for another day, however, I was anxious to find "The Henge" after all those hours of driving.

Equipped with my road map and Cook's book, I entered what seemed to be a small grocery and showing my best smile, I kindly approached an elderly lady behind the teller. She was not able to speak or understand either German or English and me not speaking or understanding any Polish, I was struggling to make the lady understand that I would like to know the place shown on the photo page in Cook's book. She didn't recognize "The Henge", however I was lucky that another women - probably her daughter - entered the scene and the conversation started in a very fundamental way of using the English language. However, she immediately recognized the picture showing "The Henge" which I gladly assessed as proof that I was in the right place. She referred to a place that she called "Fabrica", and it didn't make that much sense to me then. However, I made her draw for me the way from the grocery to that place onto my scrapbook.

Back in my car, I followed the drawing, which guided me to the side of the hills in opposition to the ammunition bunkers. Following a narrow road for about one kilometer, the trees suddenly gave way and I found myself at the bottom of a wide, north-south oriented valley and next to what appeared to be a timber lot. Next to an obviously abandoned railroad track, piles of trees and an old abandoned railroad station dominated the scene, and three men were busy with loading trees on an old truck.

Timber place

Again, I got out of my car, carrying Cook's book with me and approached the men who had stopped loading and were staring at me. Within a dozen steps I was among them and asked if somebody was able to speak English or German. Obviously they understood, however all of then shook their heads as I expected already. Then I showed them the picture of the "Muchotapka", "The Henge", as it is titled on some Polish web sites and asked if they know where to find this place. Two men again shook their heads and gestured, that they didn't know about that place, but the third guy standing on that truck recognized the structure. He pointed towards the northern end of the valley, where the railroad tracks faded among high grass and bushes, but also made me understand that he thought this structure was not anymore, maybe demolished some years ago.

Well, should it be possible that the main reason why I had come to that place was not anymore? Cook had published his book back in 2001, and that was only 4 years ago. I thanked them for their help and decided to walk along the railroad track to the north, as the valley didn't seem to be that large, maybe 500-600 meters wide and as I estimated, about 3-4 kilometers long. While walking down that grass covered, rusty railroad track, I read some of the pages which described the place as Nick Cook had found it about4 years ago. To the left, which was the western edge of the valley, a part of Ludwikowice could be seen, some of the houses were standing close to a steep rim, which was about 12-15 meters above the flat soil of the valley where the railroad tracks divided the valley's bottom into two almost equal sized parts. The rim and the whole wall to the left were concrete-enforced and bore markings of what appeared to be remnants of metal hooks and pins. In the middle of the wall, even an entrance was to be seen, a sort of small tunnel leading into the rock below the houses of Ludwikowice. It was pitch black in there and I could only see some 10 meters inside using my maglite, which I carried with me. Cook wrote, that the railroad tracks and the whole viaduct which it had once been, was covered by a wooden ceiling, resting on pillars and matching with the rim that I still could see to the left of me. So the place that I was walking on matched up with Cook's description of the place close to "The Henge".

But all I could see were bushes, grass and some small trees in the distance. I went on walking for another 10 minutes, then I passed some smaller trees to the left and there in the middle of the valley was the "Fabrica".

The "Factory" - "Fabrica"

This was the place that the lady in the grocery store was talking about, no doubt about it. It must have been a very large building, the roof had collapsed long ago and parts of the outer walls had been destroyed by an fire or an explosion, still some black burned pieces of the wooden construction were visible between grass covered piles of bricks and debris. The front side was as high as 20 meters, constructed with old fashioned large windows and the whole building was made of bricks, no concrete walls that would indicate a military origin of the building. There was no way of finding out what purpose this factory once had served, and the Polish people that I had met didn't either know much about this place or we were unable to communicate due to the given language problem.

At least I had found another location that is mentioned in Cook's book, and from what Cook had written "The Henge" should be in close vicinity of the "Fabrica" ruins. I looked around: the southern part of the valley with the timbers behind me, parts of Ludwicowice in to my left and behind the "Fabrica", trees and bushes to the right, the ruins of the "Fabrica" in front of me, the valley ending up in a small forest to the north and more trees and bushes to the far right on the other side of the valley's bottom. There was no sign of the structure depicted in Cook's book. Did I come too late? Was the timber fellow right and "The Henge" had been demolished some years ago, probably right after Witkowski and Cook had visited the place?

I decided to walk over to the eastern edge of the valley, to find a higher place providing a better overview of the "Fabrica", of which I wanted to take some shots. I was too close to the ruins to catch it all on one photo

I started climbing up the eastern rim, making my way through bushes and grass and suddenly and totally unexpectedly, there was an unpaved path, fading to the left and to the right into the green and just wide enough to allow small cars or tractors to transit. I had not noticed the fact before, that I had passed the ruins of a two-storey house a while ago, which was on the opposite site of the concrete-enforced rim, and thinking of it now, it was quite logical that there must be a road on the eastern side of the valley too. I decided to follow that path to the north, towards the part of the valley I hadn't visited yet. Through the trees to the left, I occasionally could catch a view of the factory ruins, and then the path widened into a 'parking lot', a large concrete enforced area with "The Henge" located at it's end. I finally had made my way too it.

Spontaneously, I began to walk right to "The Henge", but then decided to bring my car with my equipment to this place first. I walked back the way all through the bushes, following that old roadway to the end where it crossed the road that I had followed to the 'timber lot' coming from the main Street of Ludwikowice before. I had not noticed the other way to "The Henge" before, because the intersection was covered with high grass and bushes and I had passed it without seeing it. Within 15 minutes, I was with my car and now that I knew the way to go, I pulled into the narrow path towards the place where "The Henge" was waiting for me..

I had to drive very slowly with my Honda 4WD, avoiding bushes and branches which constantly got into my way. After I almost hit a big piece of debris, covered by grass and moss and therefore barely visible, I decided to continue with double care, and stopped my car every 100 meters and to walk a section of the path to clear the way from concrete debris and branches from the trees. Close to the place where the "parking lot" was located, the path intersected with an old concrete road, which I followed then. I passed some remnants of what might have been a checkpoint, a lightpole base and rests of a wall standing in the grass to the left. Between the trees to the left I could see an agriculture tower construction and some tanks, which I had passed before on my way to the 'Fabrica" when I was walking the valley bottom. Still driving very slow, I luckily noticed some uncovered shafts close to the 'parking lot', which would have been big enough to give me a real hard time if I had rolled into them with my one of my wheels.

Finally, I was parking my car right in front of "The Henge" and decided that it now was time for lunch. It was about 1 PM, and the sky began to fill up with puffy clouds. The weather forecast had predicted a sunny day for this region, changing into showers of rain at sunset. While enjoying my sandwich and beverage, I looked around, absorbing the atmosphere of this strange, abandoned place. The "parking lot" was a large, hardened area next to "The Henge", with the small road appearing somewhere between bushes and trees in the south, passing "The Henge" at the eastern side and vanishing between trees to the north. The place was dominated by huge trees all around, and to the west, occasionally the ruins of the roof of the "Fabrica" building were shimmering through the trees as they were moved by a gentle breeze.

"The Henge"

"The Henge" was fully covered by trees from the west, which was the reason why I had not seen it before when I was standing in front to the "Fabrica", looking around.

Now I was standing on a natural plateau about 10 to 12 meters above the valley bottom. The purpose for the "parking lot" was unknown to me, no signs of how it had been used before could be found. Maybe it had been an area prepared to allow heavy equipment and / or trucks to be brought into place, and I was thinking about how I had deployed with a mobile SAM-system 20 years ago in Northwest Germany several times during NATO-exercises as part of my personal history. Large and heavy radar equipment mounted on wheeled trucks for example needs a dry, load-bearing soil for deployment. The soft and wet grounds of a forest would barely carry the heavy trucks and if it would have been parked somewhere, they probably would have sunk up to the axles in mud after a day of operation.

Was this place once used by heavy Wehrmacht-trucks, carrying equipment used for the secret anti-gravity tests as mentioned by Cook and Witkowski ?

Were those trucks carrying heavy scientific equipment, and were they connected by cable bundles to the device that - according to Witkowski - once was mounted inside the concrete structure at the end of the "parking lot", allowing a bunch of scientists to operate the "Nazi-Bell" from a relative safe distance of some 50 meters? I imagined, that beside the trucks carrying very heavy and special test equipment there might have been tents or simple wooden barracks on the "parking-lot", where those scientists had their labs and library, tents for food supply and accommodation, and all easily sent on the road by trucks or even rail within hours, as a result of previous emergency moves from other places.

Well, I almost could see the scene in front of me and hear the barking commands of some SS men and the scientists standing around in groups, discussing the latest results and next steps to be taken. But then I realized, that I had come there to find out what the exact nature of the site that Igor Witkowski was so sure about and Nick Cook found so impressive.

I put back the bag with my food supply into my car, and started to take notes and photos about this place. I walked along the edges of the "parking-lot", measuring it with a folding rule that belonged, beside other items, to my equipment. The "parking lot" was about 30 by 90 meters, with the longer axis aligned to north-south direction and "The Henge" located at its northern edge. Close to "The Henge", I found the remnants of three shafts, all about 30 by 30 centimeters and filled with debris and sand. I also found the duct or shaft next to "The Henge" on the northern edge of the "parking lot", that Witkowski showed to Cook late at night. Some other shafts, all filled with sand, gravel and debris could be located along the eastern and northern edge of the "parking lot" as well along the road passing "The Henge". Then I made a series of photos of the "The Henge", the surrounding area and the ruins of the "Fabrica", which were barely visible through the trees to the west.

The next two hours I spent with collecting data about the size of the concrete structure that Witkowski stated might have been used as a test-rig for what he called "The Nazi-Bell". According to Witkowski, the "Nazi-Bell" had been a secret device under development, which found a place at the Wenceslas Mine in late 1944, when the Allies were already approaching from the west and the Red Army was only a few hundred kilometers away from the former German-Polish border.

And according to Witkowski, the concrete structure that he christened "The Henge" was the only evidence left of this secret Nazi-project; this was the reason, I spent quite a while measuring it and making photos from various angles.

I measured the diameter of "The Henge", the average diameter of each of the eleven columns, the spacing between columns and estimated the height of the structure. There were 11 columns, each measuring 100 by 160 centimeters, with the smaller side towards the center of the structure. The columns were slightly decreasing in diameter towards the top of the structure. Spacing between columns was about 7.40 meters, measured from one column to the other. The whole structure therefore represented a circle with a circumference of 92.4 meters, that equals a diameter of about 29.5 meters. I made a rough drawing of the whole place, inserting the measurements that I had done so far. Then I investigated the soil within the circumference of the structure. Witkowski had claimed, that the area inside "The Henge" once had been excavated and laid out with small tiles; according to Witkowski they had been the same that were used in the test chamber that contained the Nazi-Bell during the secret test series. Well, I had brought a small foldable spade with me and started digging at three or four places within the circumference of "The Henge". I didn't find anything, only bare earth, full of worms and bugs and weed roots. However, when I looked between the columns, I noticed on the south-eastern edge the remnants of what might have been a concrete rim, reaching around "The Henge" at a slightly larger diameter and about 3 meters outside the circle of columns. A portion of the rim of about 4 meters was left, the rest of the rim was either not accessible due to bushes or had been demolished long time ago. The concrete rim had been painted with the same turquoise paint that had been used for the whole structure.

I also activated my Geiger counter, which I had brought to this place, because it could not be ruled out in total, that the "Nazi-Bell" experiments - if they had been conducted here - might have left some radioactive footprints. I measured the Columns, the steel works of the columns where they were accessible due to wear, measured the concrete rim and the soil within "The Henge", but the level of radio activity was well within the natural radiation. So, beside the strange look of the whole structure, nothing suspicious could be found and no hint what purpose this structure and the "parking lot" had served during the war years.

Witkowski had pointed out to Cook some metal bolts, which were visible on the top of the structure, right above every column. Witkowski concluded, that those bolts once had absorbed the physical force of a heavy apparatus that must have been placed in the middle of the structure.

I made some close-in shots with my old Cannon T70, on which I had mounted a 60-200 mm tele-lens. I also noted the residual of what must have been a bluish, almost turquoise coat of paint, covering the whole concrete structure. To the North, some larger trees were growing next to ""The Henge"", providing some protection against wear by weather and sun, and the turquoise paint was still quite visible there. The columns next to the "parking lot" were totally unprotected, and the concrete has turned into crumbs at some places, revealing the iron works inside.

While I was busy with making my way through the high grass and weeds, I noticed that occasionally some people used the fine weather for a walk along the "parking lot" and "The Henge". So, this place seemed to be well known by quite a few people around Ludwikowice. Then, while taking some more photos of the "test-rig", another group of people came by. It was a Polish family, mom, dad and a son aged about 16 or 17, who was equipped with a digicam, taking shots of the place and talking to his parents in Polish. I was wondering, how many people actually knew of this place and if somebody could tell more about the Wenceslas Mine and "The Henge". So I decided to give it a try and turned to the man, asking him if he could understand English. The man spoke English very well, so did his son and soon we were in a nice conversation about that strange place. I asked him, if he ever had heard about one Igor Witkowski, and this he confirmed. At least in Poland, Witkowski seems to be of a certain popularity.

I showed Nick Cook's book to him and explained, that it had been because of Witkowski's claims why I had come to this place. We then discussed the possible purpose of "The Henge" and I told the Polish guy, who by the way was a sales man living only a few villages away from Ludwikowice, that Witkowski believed that this concrete structure once had been used as a test-rig for a secret Nazi-experiment. He laughed, and then explained that he had seen a similar structure elsewhere, and that it was the base structure of a cooling tower, as it was used next to a power plant. Now, that was what I called "Bingo"! Maybe I was lucky because I was born on a Sunday, and people in my home town always said that someone born on a Sunday usually is a very lucky person. However, I had come from 600 km away to this abandoned place just to meet somebody who could tell me of another place with a similar concrete structure to be seen. I got excited. This probably turned out to be a very interesting trip, not only because I had followed the description of a place in a foreign country given in a book and that I had managed to find this very place, but now it seemed that I was given the opportunity to solve this mystery at the same time!

I was almost done at "The Henge", all measurements recorded and lots of photos taken with my digicam and my old Canon, and I decided to make a sweep to see more of the surrounding area. I followed the road passing "The Henge" to the north, and after 500 meters I found another bunker complex hidden among the trees and bushes. Their purpose was not clear, however they appeared to have been used as storage buildings. There were about 5 large buildings along a small road heading away to the east, and the timber fellows that I had met earlier this day had chopped some of the trees in this area, leaving many tractor marks on the soft forest ground.

The road came to an intersection about one kilometer north of "The Henge", and a modern asphalt road was leading to the left back to Ludwikowice. I walked along and came back to the "Fabrica" ruins, but this time I was on the plateau above the valley's bottom, and I went to find a place with a good overview to take some shots. Then I realized, that I had found the exact place that the photographer, who did the photos for Nick Cook's book must have chosen. The place is right next to the ruins of the "Fabrica", just south of it and above the concrete wall with that tunnel that I had passed when I walked along the valley earlier this day.

I opened Cook's book, and looking at the photos about the area of the Wenceslas Mine, I compared them with the details that I could see from this perspective. And here are the photos for comparison:

I had not recognized the ruins of that two-store house that I had passed before as the "large redbrick house, an original 19th century feature of the Wenceslas Mine" that is depicted in Cook's book (photo 29). From this new perspective, it was the same place, and sometime in between the photos the Brick House must have collapsed or it was demolished partially. Same for the tower construction with the tanks, that was barely visible through the bushes in northerly direction. I had passed it on the way to the "Fabrica", too, and had seen it through the trees and bushes when I drove my car to the "parking lot". It is the same as on my photo.

"Henge's" Twin

I checked the time and decided to pack my stuff and continue to the place where according to the Polish sales man, a similar construction was still in use - Siechnice. The town is located about 25 kilometers southeast of Wroclaw. I arrived there about 4:30 PM, approached the town from the south. Already from a distance of several kilometers, the chimneys of the Siechnice power plant could be seen slightly to the right of the road. I stopped at the outskirts on the parking lot of a company, got out of my car and took the first shots of this facility. Beside an older cooling tower there was a newer type in operation. But is was the older one that I was interested in, because even from the distance I could recognize that it was not built of concrete like the new one, it had a different structure, obviously made of metal sheets connected to form a big tube. The steel cables keeping the structure in place were clearly visible. The weather had changed, as predicted, and the sun was hiding behind an increasing cloud layer, so then I arrived at Siechnice, there was no chance of getting photos in bright sunshine anymore. The southwest, where I had come from, some thunderstorm clouds were building up, and I had to face a trip back home in rainy weather.

Ten minutes later, I was pulling into a narrow road, which led to the power plant. When I reached the location, there was no way of access to the spot as a huge wall kept trespassers out of the power plant's area. I parked my car on the opposite site of the wall, close to the main gate of the power plant and read the signs telling me that entering without permission was forbidden as well as taking photos. Well, I was still on the outside of this restricted area and took my camera with me, when I left the car. Although I could not access the cooling tower, the sight from the road was well enough to allow some got photos of the whole cooling tower construction, enough to make it comparable in detail with the structure that I had visited in Ludwikowice.

The similarities between the concrete structure known as "The Henge" and the base structure of this cooling tower in Siechnice are obvious. Despite the number of columns does not match (12 at Siecnice and 11 at Ludwikowice), I am sure, that even their dimensions are almost the same. The construction features are exactly the same, leading to the assumption that the cooling tower and "The Henge" once were built using the same plans, maybe even the same construction company. I had no luck in finding out when the cooling tower in Siechnice was erected, but is in very good condition and I think it was built after WW II, maybe in the 60's or 70's.

However, comparing the details of both "The Henge" with the Siechnice cooling tower, the purpose of the bolts mentioned by Witkowski becomes clear: The upper metal construction of the cooling tower is resting on exactly those 12 bolts, being visible just on top of every column like they can be seen at "The Henge". Sorry, Mr. Witkowski, but at this point your theory goes down the drain. The concrete structure that you referred to as a possible "test-rig" for carrying the "Nazi-Bell" inside is no more than the remnant of a cooling tower. And, taking this fact into consideration it appears very plausible that the power plant at the northern end of the valley, next to the "Fabrica", would have had a cooling tower, and a good place to erect that cooling tower would have been the bank right next to the "Fabrica". The "Fabrica", whatever it may have produced, of course would have needed huge amounts of electricity, and this in a very remote location. It would have been feasible to build a power plant next to the factory, producing the required electricity from the coal coming from the in-place Wenceslas Mine. As Cook wrote himself, there was a power plant at the end of the valley, and Witkowski showed it to him. As a summary concluding my trip report, I will show the subjects of interest side by side for better comparison.

Structure comparison

This concludes my trip report to Ludwikowice and Siechnice in Poland. I now would like to add some critical comments of how Mr. Witkowski, Mr. Cook and recently also Mr. Ventura of american-antigravity.com handled the story of "The Henge".

The "Mulder-effect"

On the wall in front of me right beside my PC screen, there is a small poster hanging, showing an UFO hovering above trees and the famous words below "I want to believe". You may already know which poster I mean. It is a reprint of that famous UFO-poster once hanging on the wall next to Fox Mulder's desk, and for me it is a constant warning always in front of my eyes. A warning? Yes, because it says straight that there are many people around who are very, very gullible and more than ready to accept anything that matches with their point of view regarding certain things and theories, be they political, social, religious or other subjects. This includes people who are interested in occult stuff and UFO-research, of course. I put this poster on the wall right in front of me so it always reminds me to not lose my objectivity when investigating stories, because otherwise I would only look for 'facts' supporting my own theories and would become blind and deaf for any other sources. People who lose their objectivity run into the Mulder-effect. This appeared to have happened to Mr. Witkowski, maybe also to Mr. Cook to a certain degree and for sure it happened to Mr. Ventura, as I will explain next.

Mr. Igor Witkowski: Claims that he has knowledge about a secret Nazi-German device, which he published as the "Nazi-Bell". According to him, classified documents exist that refer to the Wenceslas Mine as the last known location where the "Nazi-Bell" had been tested. He admitted to me that he does not even have copies of those documents, and that those records had to be returned to the archive of the Polish Intelligence Service.

According to Mr. Witkowski, the description of those secret tests included the location of the concrete structure near Ludwikowice in Poland, the one that I visited myself in August 2005 and which is the subject of my trip report. Mr. Witkowski is convinced that the concrete structure was used as a test-rig to mount the Nazi-Bell onto, because some other details belonging to a cooling tower could not be found at Ludwikowice. In an email he sent to me dated 22 November 2005 he wrote that there wasn't "any trace of pipelines, either in the duct or in the nearby power plant. So I presented another hypothesis, that it wasn't a cooling tower, but frankly saying, I have no evidence as to the purpose, I mean it wasn't mentioned in the sources, only that experiments were carried out in a pool..."

Mr. Nick Cook: Together with Mr. Witkowski, he visited the site in Poland, and included Witkowski's theory about the alleged purpose of the concrete structure into his book "The Hunt for Zero Point". This gave a real boost to Witkowski's popularity, making his story the subject of many other publications so far. Mr. Cook adopted Witkowski's claims, but maintained them in a neutral way.

Mr. Ventura: He referred to the story published in Cook's book, thereby adopting it a second time. But this time, the theory of "The Henge" was no longer handled as a theory - which still would have been the correct way - this time the alleged purpose of the concrete structure was taken as a fact.

Just note the text below the first picture in this article by Tim Ventura: "The Nazi-Bell: No evidence remains other than this abandoned test-rig...or does it ?" Beg your pardon, but what makes the concrete structure at Ludwikowice a 'test-rig" for the Nazi-Bell and why then is it referred to as 'evidence"? Because Witkowski claimed so? Because Cook repeated those claims in his book ?

I think it is about time to make a clear statement and divide speculation from facts. So what really do we have about the "test-rig"? Mr. Witkowski "may have" had access to classified sources that unveiled detailed information about the "Nazi-Bell" and the tests conducted at Ludwikowice. He failed to show any evidence for those records so far, but that might be OK because of the nature of those sources. Concerning the concrete structure at Ludwikowice, it looks like Mr. Witkowski fully ran into the Mulder-effect, mixing up his assumptions with his wishes to find something that could support his theory or the story. Seems to me that he was so fixated on the idea, that "The Henge" was the place for the last "Nazi-Bell" experiment that he totally ruled out any other explanation for the purpose of that concrete structure.

When Nick Cook visited the site at Ludwikowice together with Witkowski, he became strongly influenced by Witkowski's arguments, which were only based upon his own assumptions, as we now know. But speaking about Nick Cook, he might have stepped into the Mulder-effect as well because he was looking for anything that could support his theory of secret Nazi experiments dealing with Zero Point Energy and anti-gravity devices and he willingly adopted Witkowski's claims as the most logical explanation for the concrete structure at Ludwikowice.

And finally there is Tim Ventura, who absolutely failed to differentiate speculations from facts, presenting several photos of the "test-rig" in his article about the "Nazi-Bell", and promoting the up-to-then theory or claim about the purpose of "The Henge" as a fact, stating: "this is evidence". Mr. Ventura, it is not as you may have realized after reading my trip report. The reason for putting this material online within the context of the other pages shown here on bielek-debunked.com is that Mr. Ventura added some text and a photo concerning the Philadelphia Experiment to his a.m. pdf-article. It should be pointed out again and very clear, that the picture of the alleged "Test Crew of the USS Eldridge" stems from the home page of Mr. Michael Houtzager, which is http://www.bielek.com . This particular photo as well as most of the other photos and the whole claims of the main person of that internet site, Mr. Alfred Bielek, have been debunked and proven to be lies and faked facts; this was accomplished in 2003. However, Mr. Ventura chose to adopt that faked material which stems from Al Bielek into the article about the "Nazi-Bell", again presenting it as fact to support the main story. .

As a summary I would like to give good advice to everybody researching or investigating stories like the Philadelphia Experiment, the Montauk Project, Anti-gravity or Nazi-experiments: Be always sure that you extensively check out the sources that are available before presenting a doubtful mix of facts and wishful thinking to the public. It requires time, objectivity and sometimes even money to do so. If you are not willing to follow this advice, you likely will end up with half-truth and half fiction, which for sure is not what you want to make public.

There is a creeping process of turning speculations, rumours and claims into facts by quoting them over and over again.

Stay away from the Mulder-effect.

Gerold Schelm

November 2005

LINK

Fan-funded Nazi UFO movie has raised $7.65 million

2010-07-01T18:38:00.001+08:00

You must have loved the trailer for that Nazi UFO movie we showed you last week, because thanks to fan donations, the project has already pulled in 90 percent of the feature-length project's $8.5 million budget.

Iron Sky's premise is that Nazis in flying saucers escaped to the moon during the closing days of World War II, and in 2018 they return to conquer the Earth. Casting for the film is almost done, and filming will begin in Australia and Germany later this year.

Though Iron Sky's success in pulling in fan funding might encourage others to create films in which the audience and investor are the same, special-effects guru Samuli Torssonen warns that theirs is a special case.
"We didn't come out of nowhere," he said. "We've been building our Internet community and visibility since 1999, with Star Wreck. You have to invest a lot of time and energy to win the trust of the Internet audience."

What if Hitler had invaded Eire?

2010-06-29T23:24:00.001+08:00

Mon, Jun 28, 2010
ANALYSIS: Dublin’s Gauleiter was to have sweeping powers which could have meant the liquidation of trade unions and the GAA, writes TOM CLONAN

SEVENTY YEARS ago this summer, Adolf Hitler’s general staff drew up detailed plans to invade Ireland. In June of 1940, Germany’s 1st Panzer Division had just driven the British Expeditionary Force into the sea at Dunkirk.

The Nazis, intoxicated by their military victory in France, considered themselves unstoppable and were determined to press their advance into Britain and Ireland. Germany’s invasion plans for Britain were codenamed Operation Sealion. Their invasion plans for Ireland were codenamed Unternehmen Grün or Operation Green.

Like Operation Sealion, Operation Green was never executed. The Nazis failed to achieve air superiority over the English Channel that summer. By the autumn of 1940 the Battle of Britain had been won by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and Hitler postponed his British and Irish invasion.

Some military historians also believe that the plans for Operation Green, drawn up in minute detail, may have been a feint to divert British resources away from Germany’s invasion of southern England. However, had the RAF been overwhelmed that summer by the German air force, the Luftwaffe, Operation Green gives a sobering insight into what fate neutral Ireland would have suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

Operation Green was conceived under the scrutiny of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock. Bock had a fearsome reputation as an aggressive campaign officer – well versed in the concept of Blitzkrieg. Bock had been commander of Germany’s army group north during the invasion of Poland in 1939 and army group B during the invasion of France in May of 1940. Nicknamed Der Sterber, or Death Wish, by his fellow officers, von Bock was ultimately given responsibility for Germany’s planned assault on Moscow (Operation Typhoon) during Germany’s subsequent invasion of Russia.

In the summer of 1940 however – before Hitler had turned his attentions towards Russia – von Bock was preoccupied with invasion plans for neutral Ireland and assigned responsibility for it to the German 4th and 7th army corps, army group B under the command of General Leonhard Kaupisch.

If these German army units in particular had reached Ireland’s shores in 1940, the consequences for Ireland would have been tragic and would have profoundly altered the course of history for the Republic and its citizens.

The German 4th army corps in particular had a brutal reputation in battle and inflicted many civilian casualties as they secured the Polish corridor to Warsaw during the invasion of Poland in 1939. Later in 1941, the 4th army corps, equipped with its own motorised infantry and Panzer tank divisions, would play a crucial role during Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s invasion of Russia. The 4th army corps, earmarked for service in Ireland in the summer of 1940, conducted brutal operations the following summer as they took Minsk and Smolensk on their advance to Moscow in June and July 1941.

Had the 4th and 7th been deployed to Ireland in 1940, their tactics would have been brutal and their advance rapid – up to 100km per day.

The Nazis allocated 50,000 German troops for the invasion of Ireland. An initial force of about 4,000 crack troops, including engineers, motorised infantry, commando and panzer units, was to depart France from the Breton ports of L’orient, Saint-Nazaire and Nantes in the initial phase of the invasion.

According to Operation Green, their destination was Ireland’s southeast coast where beach-heads were to be established between Dungarvan and Wexford town. Once they had control and airstrips had been established (negligible armed resistance was expected) waves of Dornier and Stuka aircraft would have started bombing military and communications targets throughout the Irish Free State, as it then was, and Northern Ireland.

In the second phase of the invasion (to start within 24 hours of the first landings), ground troops of the 4th and 7th army corps would have begun probing attacks, initially on the Irish Army based in Cork and Clonmel, followed by a thrust through Laois-Offaly towards the Army’s Curragh Camp base in Co Kildare.

Their rate of advance would have been rapid, with some units reaching the outskirts of Dublin within 48 hours of landing in the southeast.

The capital city was identified by the Nazis as one of six regional administrative centres for the British Isles had occupation taken place. Dublin’s Gauleiter was to have sweeping executive powers and would have had instructions to dismantle, and if necessary, liquidate, any of Ireland’s remaining indigenous political apparatus, her intellectual leadership and any non-Aryan social institutions such as the trade union movement or the GAA, for example. Irish Jews would have been murdered en masse.

Hitler’s generals were aware that their operations in Ireland would have to be self-sustaining given that their troops would be operating far from the continental mainland in Europe’s most western region.
Adm Raeder described the German force in Ireland as one which of necessity “would be left to its own devices” in order to execute its mission of conquest. Therefore, Operation Green envisaged that German troops here would administer martial law and curfews, commandeering shelter, food, fuel and water from the civilian population. The plans even contained an annex with the names and addresses of all garage and petrol station owners throughout Munster and the midlands.

This policy of predation on the civilian population would have inevitably led the Germans into direct conflict with civilians as they confiscated livestock, food, fuel and used forced labour to support their advance northwards. As was the case in continental Europe, Irish civilians would have borne the brunt of the casualties in an invasion, either through the vagaries of war, punitive actions by the Germans or through the almost inevitable counter-attack by Britain.

In military terms, the Irish Army would have been wholly ill-equipped to challenge a German invasion in the summer of 1940. In 1939, there were approximately 7,600 regulars in the Army with a further 11,000 volunteers and reserves of the Local Defence Force, forerunner of the FCA. By May 1940, this number had dropped by 6,000 due to financial constraints. The Irish government’s recruitment campaign only began to bear fruit by the autumn of 1940.

Had the Germans come ashore in the summer of 1940, they would have been met by an Army with no experience of combined arms combat and capable only of company- sized manoeuvres, involving a maximum of about 100 men. In addition, the Irish Army was poorly equipped, possessing only a dozen or so serviceable armoured cars and tanks. In terms of small arms, the Army did have plenty of Lee Enfield rifles – of first World War vintage – but had only 82 machine guns in total for the defence of the entire State.

Many Irish units also moved about on bicycles – referred to at the time as Peddling (or Piddling) Panzers. Had they been engaged by the Wehrmacht, the Irish would have been slaughtered.

Ironically, the Germans were not the only foreign power making plans for the invasion of Ireland in the summer of 1940. In June of that year, Gen Montgomery drew up plans for the seizure of Cork and Cobh along with the remainder of the Treaty ports.

When Britain’s prime minister, Winston Churchill, became aware of Operation Green, the British military set out detailed plans to counter-attack the Germans from Northern Ireland. Codenamed Plan W, it envisaged Irish Army units regrouping in the Border areas of Cavan-Monaghan and being reinforced by British troops moving south from Northern Ireland. In this scenario, the Irish and British armies would have fought alongside one another to repel the German invasion.

Had this happened, it is hard to see that widespread casualties, military and civilian, would not have ensued.
Of course, neither Operation Green nor Plan W were implemented. Ireland survived the war almost entirely untouched by it, thanks largely to its neutral status being respected by the combatants and the crucial role played by the RAF in the summer of 1940.

Were it not for the sacrifices of the 544 British, New Zealand, Czech, South African, Canadian, Polish, Australian, French and some Irish who fought and died with them during the Battle of Britain, who knows what flag would now fly over Leinster House.

Tom Clonan is Irish Times Security Analyst.
He lectures in the School of Media, DIT.

Nazi flying discs: The alternative Roswell

2010-06-11T11:35:00.000+08:00

We all know the story about the incident at Roswell New Mexico. A flying "saucer" crashes in a ranchers field, the RAAF(Roswell Army Air force) are quickly dispatched to the scene, recovering the craft and its contents, and covering it up with a weather balloon story. It is commonly theorized that whatever crashed there that day was an alien space craft, and bodies recovered. However, certain events in history, seem to suggest otherwise. What if the craft that crashed wasn't extra-terrestrial in nature, what if the crashed saucer was actually German in nature? To describe this we must go backwards in history to when it all started, in Germany.

Germany 1912 two years before the Great War of 1914-18.
A small unknown secret society known as the Thule society (sometimes referred to as the Vril society, who had connections to the Bavarian illuminati, among other secret societies), wandered upon plans to flying disc technology. How they got these plans, I’m still trying to figure out, some suggest that they got them from contact with an advanced alien species, others suggest they got them from India (look them up on vimanas in the Hindu holy book. There were ancient scrolls found with blueprints to flying disc technology in Tibet. These are now in the possession of the Chinese space agency, however what i do know is that Junkers (German aircraft manufactures), patented the first flying disc plans in 1912 (If you have the time, look it up it's there).

Germany 1917 during the Great War.
The Thule society, funds Junkers to make the first flying disc, and is constructed at some point in 1917. This first disc is named Vril 1. After prolonged testing, the craft was a failure, they couldn't control the craft properly, and more research was started on an efficient control system. The way the craft works is by rotating high powered electromagnets to distort gravity, creating an anti gravity field round the craft thereby negating gravitational forces on earth, helping it stay up.

Germany 1920 post Great War.
Another disc is constructed, Vril 2. This one had an efficient control system, which worked perfectly. It could hold 1 crewmember, and could stay aloft for 2 hours. It was said that the craft had an insufficient power source.

Germany 1925.
A new flying disc is designed and constructed. The craft is called Hannebu 1. This was much larger than Vril 2, it could hold 8 crew, and stay aloft for up to 8 weeks, providing of course that the crew had sufficient supplies. A few of these were made, and put into storage.

Germany 1926-1930.
The Kuegal-Bauells project was started, with over 30 of these single seater craft made. They were small, had no armaments, and were short ranged recon craft.

Germany 1933.
Adolf Hitler a Thule society member, and his Nazi party comes to power in Germany. He begins rebuilding his military, but neglects the importance of the flying discs projects. Attention is shifted from electro magnetic propulsion, to rocketry, and jet propulsion.

Germany 1938-1942.
Kuegal Bauells are seen over the skies of German occupied territory. Allied pilots dub these "Foo Fighters", no investigation was launched into what these were, however many photos are taken of them. Hitler begins to realize what potential these discs have. He orders a new project, Hannebu 2. This new craft was bigger than the first hannebu, being able to hold at least 20 people. They tested these craft with numerous armaments, in particular was one made with two Panzer VI turrets, above and below. The flying discs, were reported as not being very good for dog fighting. The control system was different to that of a normal aircraft. It could not fly straight forwards or backwards, it could only do right angled turns. It could not "wheel turn", it had to stop to turn. However it could go side to side. Current weapon systems were deemed useless on the hannebu 2, as the metallic projectiles used by the weapons, were affected by the electro magnetic field.

Germany 1944.
Things were getting desperate for Hitler, as the allies were sweeping through France and Denmark. He ordered another two projects, Hannebu 3 and the Andromeda project. Hannebu 3 was the same as the last two but could hold up to 30 people, and stay aloft indefinitely. Andromeda was a cigar shaped craft, that could fly out of atmosphere. It could hold at least two craft, and could hold over 80 people. Only one was rumored to be made.

Germany 1945.
The allies were in German territory and capturing facilities. Hitler orders the Kuegal Baull fleet to be destroyed (to stop technology falling into allied hands), and one of them to be sent to Japan. Hitler then orders the whole flying disc projects to be sent to Neu Schwabenland Antarctica (aka Base 2-11, New Berlin, a not so secret Antarctic facility made by Germany in 1937). All the hannebu craft that were still under construction were dismantled, and shipped to the Antarctic. All the rest of the craft made their way there under their own power. 7 hours before Berlin falls, Hitler escapes to Argentina via a ME226 piloted by a female German officer. The Allies march into Berlin after tough fighting, nothing remained of Hitler, or the flying disc project.

Roswell New Mexico, 1947.
A flying disc crashes in the ranch of one W.W."Mack" Brazel. The US military are over it in days...and covered up. Why? Wouldn't the evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence be the most important discovery in the history of man? Or was it perhaps that the crash in question, was a German made flying disc. A year and a half from the end of World War Two, in which millions died, a Nazi disk goes down on US Soil. Was this why they were so quick to cover it up? Think of it this way: Millions of American, British, French, Russian, German et al families had all lost someone at some point. The feeling of jubilation that a tyrannical and evil man had been defeated, and would never return. Then all of a sudden the public finds out that indeed we did not win, but a small outpost still remained. The public finds out that the Nazis have superior technology....There would be rioting and panic on the streets. How angry would you feel if you had just lost your only son fighting a war that still hasn't ended, even after victory was declared a year and a half prior?

Antarctica 1948.
Admiral Byrd(USN), departs from the USA with a large flotilla of ships, including aircraft carriers, and over 4,000 troops. He is defeated, on the Antarctic continent, by "the last battalion". He limps back to the USA, the whole incident is covered up as a routine survey mission.......(more about this is another article)

There you have it. Grays weren't recovered at Roswell, Blonde haired blue-eyed humans were.....

Article Copyright© LoneSoldier

The Hitler Diaries: The Big "Discovery"

2010-06-11T11:32:00.000+08:00

Junkers 352 transport

One of Heidemenn's first steps was to try and determine how the Stiefel's volume of the diary had gotten into his hands. Stiefel had been told the diary had been aboard a plane carrying some of the Fuehrer's belongings that had crashed in the village of Boernersdorf at the end of the war. The first thing that Heidemann did was to travel to Boernersdorf to confirm the story. There he found that indeed there had been a plane crash in April of 1945. Records indicated that a Junkers 352 transport went down carrying some of Hitler's personal effects. When he heard of the crash Hitler had stated, "In that plane were all my private archives that I had intended as a testament to posterity. It is a catastrophe!"

In April 1983, the popular West German magazine Stern made a shocking announcement that sparked passionate debates throughout the world and temporarily challenged historical views concerning Germany's most notorious ex-chancellor. The periodical claimed that 62 handwritten volumes of secret diaries allegedly written by the founder of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler, had been discovered in East Germany. According to Charles Hamilton's book, The Hitler Diaries, the volumes were reported to be one of the most-significant, historical discoveries in recent history. However, time proved the manuscripts instead were one of the biggest hoaxes of the century.

The "priceless" diaries were allegedly discovered several years earlier by an East German who had learned that the artifacts were in the possession of farmers living in the village of Boernersdorf. Apparently, they were rescued from a downed Nazi plane that had crashed and burned in April 1945. The documents were reported to have survived the inferno because they were supposedly protected in a metal-lined container. Following their discovery, it was alleged that the documents were kept in a secret location, then eventually smuggled out of the country and kept secured until they were publicly revealed to the world years later.

Historical accounts further supported the sensational story, which were based on the memoirs of Hitler's chief SS pilot, Lt. General Hans Baur. Baur purportedly claimed that the plane, piloted by Major Friedrich A. Gundlfinger was carrying Hitler's private archives when it was shot down en route from Berlin in April 1945. The evidence was enough for some to believe that the diaries were indeed genuine artifacts. However, Stern realized that they would need to provide more proof that the diaries were authentic. Especially if they were going to sell the story to other publishers, which they had planned to do.

The Hitler Diaries: History Rewritten

2010-06-11T11:21:00.000+08:00

On April 25, 1983, news of the Hitler diaries dominated the headline on Stern magazine's front page. It was quickly followed by similar headlines in magazines and newspapers throughout Europe and the United States. The news of the discovery sent a shockwave throughout the world. It was considered to be one of the biggest historical finds of the century.

As the news spread, many were shocked to learn that the diaries portrayed a much different Hitler than what was previously understood. The Hitler that filled the pages of the diary was much more affable than historical accounts depicted him to be. There were entries in the diary, which suggested that Hitler had little, if anything, to do with the 1938 Nazi riot against the Jews known as the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Conversely, historical accounts suggested that Hitler actually orchestrated and commanded the vicious rampage that caused so much destruction and ended so many innocent lives.

Moreover, the diary entries further suggested that Hitler had little, if any, knowledge of the horrific events that took place in many of the concentration camps scattered throughout Europe. Instead, the diaries alleged that Hitler would have rather had the Jews deported to other countries instead of terminating them in the camps. In other words, the diaries led people to believe that Hitler was not the kind of man who would have ruthlessly murdered millions of people. However, historical accounts and testimony from survivors and those who actually bore witness to the atrocities in the concentration camps grossly conflicted with the writings in the diary.

Surprisingly, many historians and experts were so caught up in the fervor of the discovery that they inadvertently disregarded important inconsistencies within the diaries. Yet, there were those who weren't so easily swayed by the ensuing enthusiasm and were surprised, even distressed by the diaries' content. Skeptics wondered how anyone could have overlooked or fallen for such obvious nonsense. They refused to accept the new image of Hitler that was being exemplified in the diaries and in the media. Thus, the news of the discovery and the diaries' content prompted as much disbelief and skepticism as it did credence.

Oil and Triumph of Nazi Germany

2010-06-11T11:12:00.000+08:00

In 1945 the leader of Nazi Germany took his own life in an underground bunker surrounded by the smoldering remains of his capital city. What if Hitler had made a simple strategy change in 1941? Could the war have ended with the Axis powers ruling most of the world and America cowering on the other side of the globe?

Adolf Hitler needed oil. By 1941 the German war machine - tanks, planes and trucks - would soon grind to a stop without petroleum. Hitler and his allies controlled most of the continent of Europe along with parts of northern Africa, but no area within the influence of the Axis powers, contained enough resources of oil to meet his needs. This was a problem that Hitler needed to solve and solve soon.

READ MORE

Book: Rising Sun Victorious: An Alternate History of the Pacific War

2010-06-11T09:10:00.001+08:00

Product Description

“Everyone with an interest in the Pacific War will find something stimulating in this thought-provoking study of what might have been.”
–British Army Review

In war, victory can be held hostage to seemingly insignificant incidents–chance events, opportunities seized or cast aside–that can derail the most brilliant military strategies and change the course of history. What if the Japanese had conquered India and driven out the British? What if the strategic link between the United States and Australia had been severed? What if Vice Admiral Nagumo had launched a third attack on Pearl Harbor? What if the U.S. Navy’s gamble at Midway had backfired?

Ten leading military historians ask these and other questions in this fascinating book. The war with Japan was rife with difficult choices and battles that could have gone either way. These fact-based alternate scenarios offer intriguing insights into what might have happened in the Pacific during World War II, and what the consequences would have been for America.

“A compelling read . . . bound to generate a good deal of debate.”
–The Defense Information Bulletin

“Rising Sun Victorious is must reading.”
–Almanac of Seapower

About the Author

Lt. Col. Peter G. Tsouras, USAR (ret.), is a military historian who recently retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he served as a senior intelligence officer. He also served at the National Ground Intelligence Agency (NGIC) and with the 1st Battalion, 64th Armor, in Germany. Tsouras is the author or editor of twenty-two books on current military operations, military history, and alternate history. He is married, has three children, and lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Book: Third Reich Victorious: Alternate Decisions of World War II

2010-06-11T09:03:00.002+08:00

Product Description

This book is a stimulating and entirely plausible insight into how Hitler and his generals might have defeated the Allies, and a convincing sideways look at the Third Reich's bid at world domination in World War II. What would have happened if, for example, the Germans captured the whole of the BEF at Dunkirk? Or if the RAF had been defeated in the Battle of Britain? What if the U-Boats had strangled Britain with an impregnable blockade, if Rommel had been triumphant in North Africa, or the Germans had beaten the Red Army at Kursk? The authors, writing as if these and other world changing events had really happened, project realistic scenarios based on the true capabilities and circumstances of the opposing forces. Third Reich Victorious is a spirited and terrifying alternate history, and a telling insight into the dramatic possibilities of World War II. The authors are Dr. Steven Badsey, Charles Messenger, John D. Burtt, Wade G. Dudley, John H. Gill, David C. Isby, Forrest R. Lindsey, Paddy Griffith, Gilberto Villehermosa, and Peter G. Tsouras, who is also the editor of this book. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Peter G. Tsouras is a research leader for the Battelle Corporation in Crystal City. Formerly he was a senior intelligence analyst at the US Army National Ground Intelligence Center's Washington office. His alternate histories are Disaster at D- Day (1853672653), Gettysburg (1853674826), The Hitler Options (as contributing author) (1853673129), and Rising Sun Victorious (as editor and contributing author). --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Peter Tsouras is a good writer as proven by his earlier effort "Disaster at D-Day," an excellent story of what could have happened at Normandy in 1944. He took a few critical 'what ifs' and extrapolated on them to produce a sound alternative to actual history.

His work as an editor was not quite up to this level of excellence however. Most of the stories are chosen are interesting and some of them are real gems. Many military enthusiasts have wondered about the what ifs like Turkeys entrance into the War on the Axis' side, if the Luftwaffe had continued to hit the battered RAF instead of going after the cities during the Blitz etc. Also the military aspects are well researched and small details show the attention paid to this aspect of the stories.

Other stories are real stretches, such as the before mentioned Hitler as a naval enthusiast. The Russian first strike into German occupied Europe is a good read but Zhukov was by no means the eminent Soviet leader then he would be by 43-44. No way at that time would he have led an invading Soviet force.

Most of these are simply quibbles, the book is a good read overall and worth purchasing. There is some very good stories here and even the less probable are well written. Enjoy!

By C. A. Temm

Book: The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism

2010-06-11T08:57:00.001+08:00

Review

"With The World Hitler Never Made Gavriel Rosenfeld takes a completely fascinating and highly original cut into the complex of questions concerning the relationship between history and memory on the subject of Nazism and its place in post-1945 popular culture. He tackles these themes with great verve, writing with admirable clarity, and marshalling a prodigious array of speculative fictions and 'alternate histories' in order to build his arguments. The resulting book is both accessible and challenging, densely documented and thoroughly absorbing. All German historians will want to read it, as will anyone interested in Holocaust memory and the legacies of Nazism." Geoff Eley, University of Michigan

"Gavriel Rosenfeld's analysis of 'alternative historical' treatments of Nazi Germany, embracing a broad range of popular media, is bound to raise hackles. Yet in seeking to comprehend the comparative, changing mentalities of postwar America, Britain, and Germany he has conceived and produced a provocative and deeply insightful book. The World Hitler Never Made is a strikingly original and imaginative cultural history that reveals a great deal about the post-war world by examining 'alternative historical' forays into Nazism and the Holocaust. It is perhaps the most accessible, as well as one of the most important scholarly books ever written about the role of the Holocaust in popular consciousness from the war's end up to our own time." Michael Berkowitz, University College London

"A history of alternative histories, The World Hitler Never Made is an imaginative and intriguing look at our culture's fascination with what might have been, had things gone differently during the Second World War. With panache, erudition and a broad comparative sweep, Rosenfeld analyzes these distorted images of what occurred, unearthing our evident pleasure in imagining other outcomes and what that says about our relationship to the Nazi past. The possibility of evil winning, or at least sidestepping defeat, cuts perhaps all too close to the bone today." Peter Baldwin, University of California, Los Angeles

"In this wide-ranging and highly stimulating book, Gavriel Rosenfeld explores the changing nature yet strange persistence of alternate histories of the Nazi past, showing the ways in which Hitler and the Third Reich have occupied Western popular culture long after the regime's demise. In so doing Rosenfeld does more than simply advance a persuasive case for why such mass market myth-making and counterfactual history deserve to be taken more seriously as revealing expressions of popular memory; The World That Hitler Never Made goes a long way towards furnishing a cultural history of some of the most powerful fears and fantasies haunting the Western social imagination from the end of the Second World War to the present." Paul Betts, University of Sussex

"The World Hitler Never Made is an impressive work." -Financial Times, Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Oxford University

"There is no better guide than The World Hitler Never Made, which takes us through this strange domain without descending into it." -The New Leader

"The World Hitler Never Made is an important, well-researched book."
Ronald Hilton

"Gavriel Rosenfeld's recent study is an interesting and original contribution to our understanding of history and memory." -Clifton Ganyard, German Studies Review

Product Description

What if the Nazis had triumphed in the Second World War? What if Adolf Hitler had escaped Berlin for the jungles of Latin America in 1945? Gavriel Rosenfeld's pioneering study explores why such counterfactual questions on the subject of Nazism have proliferated in recent years within Western popular culture. Examining a wide range of novels, short stories, films, television programmes, plays, comic books, and scholarly essays that have appeared in Great Britain, the United States, and Germany since 1945, Rosenfeld shows how the portrayal of historical events that never happened reflects the evolving memory of the Third Reich's real historical legacy. He concludes that the shifting representation of Nazism in works of alternate history, as well as the popular reactions to them, highlights their subversive role in promoting the normalization of the Nazi past in Western memory.

Gayriel Rosenfeld's very interesting "The World Hitler Never Made" is a fair and thorough survey of the literature (particularly fiction) that sprang up after World War II asking "what if" the war had turned out differently. Not surprisingly, much of what Rosenfeld examines is science fiction, since that is the genre that is most able to handle that kind of historical/social speculation. This book looks at Philip K. Dick's masterful The Man in the High Castle; Robert Harris' Fatherland: A Novel (Mortalis) both book and movie; C.M. Kornbluth's novella "Two Dooms", which is found in His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C.M. Kornbluth; Stephen Fry's comic Making History; the almost forgotten-by-everyone pulp novel Who Will Watch the Watchers which I read when I was a kid; and many others.

My favorite of this genre is Norman Spinrad's amazing The Iron Dream which I urge everyone to go out and buy immediately. Rosenfeld raises the question whether Spinrad's historical pessimism lets Hitler off the hook a little bit: in the novel, the Holocaust happens anyway in the Soviet Union even though Hitler never came to power and ended up a hack sci-fi writer in America. I don't agree with this spin on Spinrad, but it's interesting to think about. In spite of all the large historical forces at work, individuals have to be held accountable for the evil that they do. Rosenfeld's not unexpected conclusion is that Hitler was a dominant, horrific figure in the imagination of the culture and we are unlikely to forget him for the foreseeable future.

By

R. W. Rasband

Jurassic Reich

2010-06-11T08:38:00.001+08:00

The Anubis Gates- the real story of Jurassic Reich

1800 Twelve months after unearthing the Rosetta Stone, Napoleon’s troops in Egypt uncover a large, ancient Egyptian artifact. It is taken to Paris for exhibition, but ends up in storage.

1940   Germany occupies France. In the vaults of the Louvre Museum the artifact is found and taken to Berlin.   Himmler learns of the artifact and commissions a team from the Ahnenerbe, the Nazi Occult Bureau, to investigate.

1941    German scientists discover that the artifact is a gateway back to Earth’s prehistoric past. Teams are sent back and return with living dinosaurs.

1942    Hitler orders the creation of a new weapon of terror – the Kreigsclaw – units of mounted dinosaurs and pterodactyls.

The famous film director, “Dino de Laurentis is commissioned to make a propaganda film demonstrating Germany’s conquest of the primeval forces of nature.

Nazi Super Trains

2010-06-10T11:18:00.001+08:00

The greatest project in the history of the railroad! The initiator was Dr. Fritz Todt, the General Inspektuer for the German roads. He suggested to Hitler the construction of a "High-performance-train". Hitler was impressed and gave order in May 1942 to the Reichsbahn and the Verkehrsministerium, to develop the "Reichsspurbahn". At first, "they" planned a wheel track with 4 meters, then 3 meters (=3.28 yards).

The high-performance-locomotives should pull 8-spindle double-floor-wagons with a length over 40 meters (=43.75 yards), a breadth and a top over 6 meters. The wagons should be able to be fitted with restaurant, cinema, swimming pool, barbershop and sauna. The whole train would have a length about 500 meters, the high-speed train was planned to go over 200 km/h (125 mph). Usually the lines of the Breitspurbahn were built parallel to the "normal" train.

The locomotives:

Length: the smallest locomotive 29 meters, the biggest 128 meters (with 52 spindles!!!).

Height: 7 meters

Motors: Maybe: Steam-Turbo-Mechanical, Steam-Turbo-Electrical, Gas-Turbo-Electrical, Diesel-Hydraulic, Diesel-Electrical

Power: 24000 up to 40000 PS

High-speed: planned up to 250 Km/h

Capacity: 2000 to 4000 passengers in 1 train

Companies involved in construction: Krauss-Maffei, Henschel, Borsig, BBC, Krupp

Routes:

East-West:

Rostow-Stalino-Poltawa-Kiew-Lemberg-Krakau-Kattowitz-Breslau-Cottbus-Berlin-Hannover-Bielefeld -Ruhrgebiet-Aachen-Lüttich-St.Quentin-Paris

North-Southeast:

Hamburg-Wittenberge-Berlin-Leipzig-Gotha-Bamberg-Nürnberg-München-Simbach am Inn-Linz-Wien-Preßburg-Budapest-Belgrad-Bukarest-Varna/Burgas-Istanbul

North-South-Parallel-route:

Berlin-Dresden-Augsburg-Prag-Iglau-Znaim-Wien-Triest-Rom

East-West Part Two:

München-Augsburg-Stuttgart-Karlsruhe-Metz-Reims-Paris-Marseille-Spain

Planning State at End of War: Only location-line-survey

Die Breitspureisenbahn

Nazi Diesielpunk (1941)

2010-06-10T10:59:00.000+08:00

Heliport/Railway Station

Martin Kappler has scanned and uploaded a German poster from 1941 which shows Third Reich images of the paleo-future. The poster was in a book called Durch die weite Welt vol. XIX, one in a series of books for boys.

The headline and main text read:

What new things will the technology of tomorrow bring?
Today still a venturous plan - tomorrow maybe reality

Technology and economy in the Greater German Reich have gone into an unexpected upswing. The largest network of Autobahn highways has been constructed in just a few years, whole new industries were created and great architectural and urbanistic tasks are about to be realised. Although the war, that was forced upon us, makes it necessary to concentrate our economy on the war efforts, the great plans for the buildup are drawn with the certitude of our victory in mind. Many keen inventions and many thoughts that still seem fantastic today will then be realised. The pictures in this poster show on which branches the engineers are working today and what the technology of tomorrow will bring.

Underground Train called "Driving Torpedo"

Stratospheric Airplane

Ocean Liner

Water Airplane

Double Decker Bus

Motel

Submarine With Rotating Outer Hull

Black Sun: The Mythological Background of National Socialism.

2010-06-10T04:21:00.000+08:00

Rudiger Sunner, dir. Black Sun: The Mythological Background of National Socialism. Brooklyn: ICARUS Films, 2009 [1997]. DVD. Color. 90 minutes.

Reviewed by Mary Catherine Lawler (Rutgers University)
Published on H-German (June, 2010)
Commissioned by Benita Blessing

Shedding Light on Nazi Myths

In Rüddiger Sünner's 1997 film Black Sun: The Mythological Background of National Socialism, now available on DVD, Sünner's omnipresent voice-over outlines National Socialists' fascination with myths, legends, and symbols of the supposedly oldest, most superior of all races--the Aryan clan. As Sünner clearly demonstrates, the Nazis misconstrued, often consciously or without interest in facts, these bases for their ideological claims to racial superiority. The Nazi claim to these myths went beyond an appropriation of earlier people's foundational tales. In the Nazi (re-)tellings, the original figures and stories become unrecognizable. There was no attempt to research either scientific or anthropological evidence that would prove an unbroken ancestral chain from dominant, half-god forerunner--whose own superiority would supposedly legitimate the Nazis' right to racial hatred.

Sünner highlights the hypocrisy inherent in the development of the Nazi Party, including a detailed explanation of how Nazis asserted the existence of "half-races." As Sünner demonstrates, Nazis believed that an Aryan race existed as half-gods. This status positioned them as having unique power and knowledge inaccessible to other peoples or races. Meanwhile, based on an ahistorical assumption from a medieval belief, the Jewish people, also considered half-beings, were criticized for supposedly being an "inferior race." The most subtle and intelligent aspect of Sünner's film is his argument for a subconscious, psychological target in the German people--a sort of buried collective consciousness that longed for a return to such mythological origins.

The pinnacle of the film lies in the sequences of modern Germans gathering at the "Externsteinen." These five looming rock structures--the largest over thirty-seven meters high--represent an important part of myths of a clear German heritage. These myths glorify their presence throughout multiple periods of German and so-called Germanic history: their assumed use in pagan rituals; their role as a fortress in the Middle Ages; Heinrich Himmler's identification of them as a national site of German pride; and, more recently, the multiple audiences who visit the site--from tourists to neo-Nazis. Here Sünner remarks carefully that one might see a parallel between the German state of mind shortly before the rise to power of the SS, and contemporary ideologies. He renders almost tangible the nostalgic desire for a history full of heroes fighting for good and justice, and the need to create an imaginary enemy in order to do so. This documentary thus juxtaposes the polarization in German national history between an obsession with capturing light in all its symbolic uses in order to battle the "darkness" of the Other. The final lesson that Dark Sun implies--and what makes it a provocative and interesting film for a number of audiences, whether scholars and students of history, film studies, or iconography--is the danger of not knowing one's own history. In this sense, the title signals not only the recurrent theme of evil throughout history, but also the need to shed light upon all its manifestations.

Kieth Thompson -- Concept Art -- Iron Grip

2010-06-09T23:46:00.001+08:00

Kathos has always had a large part in shaping the continent. It was the largest country, formed by an ancient alliance of four kingdoms, led by a single ruler. To the south of Kathos lies Fahrong, a country only a little smaller than Kathos, but far more fragmented. Many smaller empires are held together by treaties and trade pacts. To the south-west of Kathos is Syreden, a land half lush grassland, and half mountain. Bordering both Kathos and Fahrong, Atelia is positioned to the south-east. It is populated by a vicious warrior people, who live in nomadic settlements. Far to the north of Kathos is the continent of Rahmos and the Sedales Islands. These two countries are closely bound together, the first King of Rahmos actually having been a member of the Sedalian royal family.

Several points throughout history have set the stage for the continent as it is now. Here you will find a brief overview of the history of Kathos and important events leading up to the present.

Iron Grip > Universe > History

The Superpowers Expand

The conquest of Kathos means that Rahmos now has a modern military force combined with great economic potential if they can stabilize Kathos. This makes many of the nations surrounding Kathos nervous, especially the Sjah Nezar in Fahrong.

It isn’t long before strong diplomatic pressure from Rahmos leads Karthonie into joining Rahmos as a protectorate. In response to this, the Sjah meets with representatives from nearby countries including Syreden and Atelia, to try and persuade them to join the ‘Confederation of Nallum’. However, none of the other countries are interested in joining Fahrong, convinced they will be safer if they remain independent.

Disappointed by this, the Sjah instead begins to plan an invasion of Syreden. Before long, the invasion is launched, and initially Fahrongi troops make fast progress across the grasslands of Syreden. However, when they get into the mountains, the Syredese begin to attack from hidden tunnels, and the Fahrong military very quickly ceases to gain any territory.

Praetor Afrecus reacts to the Fahrong invasion of Syreden by deploying several divisions on the Kathos-Fahrong borders, as well as issuing a statement condemning Fahrong’s actions. By now, Afrecus has chosen his next target, the small nation of Naccaran, to the south of Karthonie. Rahmos agents are sent to the two most powerful warlords in Atelia, with the offer of money from an anonymous source if they will work together and invade Naccaran. The two men, Warlord Arlos and Warlord Yarolk both accept the deal.

After a few months of preparation and planning, the two warlords launch their assault. Naccaran and the rest of the world are taken completely by surprise by the unprovoked attack.

When the shock caused by the surprise attack wears off, the warlords do not make good progress in Naccaran. They are unfamiliar with the terrain, and are not used to commanding large forces across such a great distance. However, these issues are offset when Warlord Yarolk introduces a new weapon; the tank. The big metal vehicles are slow, prone to breakdowns and awkward to operate, but they terrify the Naccaran defenders, and are highly effective in the right conditions.

Meanwhile, Praetor Afrecus organizes a volunteer force in Kathos, and prepares to come to the aid of Naccaran with the volunteers and elements of the RSAS. He plans to use the invasion as a key factor in persuading Naccaran to join Rahmos as a protectorate.

The Fahrong invasion of Syreden remains stalled as the Syredese prove impossible to root out in the mountainous terrain. Despite this, the Sjah orders the invasion of another country, Ralhor. Consisting of Iperon emigrants from Rahmos, Ralhor is technologically advanced, and all its citizens are trained as paramilitaries. The Fahrong army moves into Ralhor, and immediately encounters heavy resistance. Progress is slow, and many die on both sides.

In Naccaran, the tide of war has turned against the two Warlords. Arlos’ offensive has simply stalled against the firm defence of the Rahmos volunteers, while Yarolk has overextended his lines. Many of the smaller tribal groups and warrior bands making up their armies are beginning to desert and return to Atelia.

Praetor Afrecus chooses this moment to give the Warlords a killing blow. A full division of the RSAS, mounted in transport airships, strike behind the lines of Yarolk’s army. Both Arlos and Yarolk are captured, and later delivered to the Naccaran leadership. The war in Naccaran is over.

Now Afrecus intends to persuade Naccaran into joining Rahmos as a protectorate state, with the incentive of permanent Rahmos protection and possibly technology trade. However, this plan is interrupted by an unexpected move by Fahrong.

The Sjah has just left a meeting with a group of Nezar spies from Rahmos, who have delivered detailed plans and schematics for some of the older airship designs. He is worried to find that almost all of the vital materials and resources required for airship construction are found in large quantities in Atelia. Rahmos is unlikely to be aware yet of how valuable in terms of resources Atelia really is, and the Sjah decides that he must take the initiative.

If Atelia remains neutral, Rahmos has the greater economic power, and so will be able to buy far more of the airship specific resources than Fahrong, giving them a decisive advantage. On the other hand, Atelia could choose to keep its resources to itself. Once it gains airship technology, Atelia could form the largest and most modern airship fleet in the world. The Sjah realizes that this cannot be allowed to happen.

V 3 - THE HIGH-PRESSURE PUMP GUN - Redux

2010-06-02T22:00:00.000+08:00

Der Ratte

2010-06-02T21:55:00.000+08:00

Secrets of the Third Reich

2010-05-31T18:58:00.002+08:00


	Secrets of the Third Reich, Rulebook RRP £20.00 Buy the book This lavishly illustrated 160 page tome contains the following: An exhaustive infantry and vehicle combat ruleset that seamlessly scales from squad to platoon level actions in the weird WWII era. 1949 Orders of Battle for Germany, USA, Great Britain, and the USSR including characters, troops, mechs, and a complete range of historical and post 1944 vehicles such as tanks, tank destroyers, halftracks, trucks, and field pieces. Richly detailed background describing how the world took a turn for the weird that plants your combat boots firmly in the Gotterdammerung of 1949. Color photography of hundreds of Weird WWII miniatures in action Fast-paced scenarios and game play guidelines. Set your games in a radiation zone or V-gas contamination zone. Play under a full moon or in a raging thunderstorm. Race for the objective as the very pits of hell open up and disgorge demons onto the battlefield. Rules to design your own Mecha! Zombies, Werewolves, and Vampires galore.






	French SoTR Forum

WWII Short Film

2010-05-31T18:46:00.001+08:00

Writer/Director Ryan Nagata recently posted a self-funded short film set in an alternate 1945.

In the film, Germany, teetering on the brink of defeat, desperately unleashes exotic superweapons in an attempt to turn back the tide.

1945A from Ryan Nagata on Vimeo.

INCURSION

2010-05-31T17:25:00.000+08:00

INCURSION is a board game set in the world of Secrets of the Third Reich. Armored troopers of the US “Lucky Seventh” hurtle through underground bunkers and combat the monstrous forces of the German SWD in a furious race against time. The Doomsday Device is ticking and neither the Allies nor the Axis can fail. The mechanics for this two player game are simple to grasp allowing players to instantly focus on their tactical options. Play is incredibly fast-paced and tense and players choose their forces through a card-based Requisition Point system. The game may either be played with chipboard stand-ups that are included in the box or with highly detailed metal miniatures that are available from this site. Miniatures are NOT required to play this game but they are really cool! The exquisitely designed and produced contents of the boxed game are as follows:

Rigid two piece box covered in art
Glossy 28 page rulebook
Card rules summary/playsheet
4 sheets of two-sided heavy-duty die cut pieces (132 total) including counters, doors and stand-ups for all models that might potentially be used in the game.
Super Heavy duty two-sided six-fold game board
86 cards including the full deck of battle and all model cards in multiples where appropriate.
3 black dice
36 black plastic stand-up holders for doors and “models”
Vac-formed plastic holding tray
More fun than you can shake a stick at!

The RAF’s Plan to Kidnap Hitler

2010-04-02T17:35:00.001+08:00

The FW.200V-3, which was first flown in natural metal finish as above, became Immelmann III as Hitler's personal transport and flagship of Regierungsstaffel. The '2600' code was continued from its use on Ju.52/3m's used by Hitler: D-2600 Immelmann I and WL-2600 Immelmann II.

The Hitler Abduction files in the National Archives at Kew, London.

In his December 2005 Crosswind column, John Fricker mentioned a plan to abduct Adolf Hitler as described in Robert Hill's book The Great Coup and asked if anyone “could quote any other reference to this extraordinary yarn?” NIALL CORDUROY took a trip to the National Archives, and uncovered some fascinating information . . .

WITHIN THE NATIONAL Archives at Kew (under Piece No AIR 16/619) there is a Fighter Command coyly entitled German Deserters: enemy aircraft landing in the UK (the National Archives' own catalogue reference is the much more lurid Adolf Hitler: Proposed abduction to England by his personal pilot). Since its contents closely match John Fricker's précis of the account given in The Great Coup it seems likely that the author used it as his primary source.

The story begins in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, in December 1940, when an individual named Kiroff contacted the Attaché at the British Legation there, claiming to be the father-in-law of Hans Baur, Hitler's personal pilot. Kiroff stated that Baur was of Austrian extraction, had lost two brothers flying in the war and, having been almost continuously on duty as Hitler's personal pilot, had become 'fed up' and was prepared to make a 'forced landing' in England with Hitler and any companions. Air Marshal Arthur Harris, Deputy Chief of Air Staff (DCAS), and Sholto Douglas (AOC-in-C Fighter Command) discussed this in person on February 6, 1941, and Harris wrote to Douglas on the 21st updating him on progress. Harris told him that Kiroff had now left Bulgaria and was planning to enter Germany via Yugoslavia in order to give Baur the Attaché's instructions and make arrangements to get Baur's wife (Kiroff's daughter) and family out of the country before the flight took place. Baur was instructed to land at Lympne, making a steep descent directly from the coast, with undercarriage down, firing no fewer than four red flares at 30sec intervals if challenged by fighters. On landing, he was to shut down the engines immediately.

Harris also told Sholto Douglas that various measures had been taken to check Kiroff's story and that with a few exceptions it had seemed credible. For those of us with the benefit of hindsight, alarm bells start ringing, as Baur's name is misspelled (as Bauer) throughout the file, he was not an Austrian, he had not lost two brothers during the war and his wife's maiden name was not Kiroff.

Douglas prepared draft instructions that RAF fighters should close on the aircraft (assumed to be a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor), shoot down or drive away any escort and then patrol the airfield until the Fw 200 had been seized. The Condor was not to be attacked unless it failed to give the flare signal, flew further inland than the Lympne circuit radius or attempted to return to France - in which case it was to be shot down.

Since Lympne was in 11 Group's parish, Douglas brought Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh- Mallory (AOC 11 Group) into the picture on February 26, but did not name the expected passenger, simply noting: 'It is not impossible that enemy aircraft crews may attempt to desert. In particular there is reason to believe that an aircraft of the Condor type may attempt to land at Lympne by daylight'. In addition to the instructions given to the fighters, the anti-aircraft defences at Lympne were stiffened and a small reception and escort party stationed there.

On March 7, Harris updated Douglas again. Kiroff had met Baur and given him his instructions, returned to Sofia and renewed contact with the Attaché. Baur had stated that he was always accompanied by three other aircraft that kept their distance unless he signalled to them. For this reason he did not want to use flares on his approach, but had instead prepared a small number of yellow, metal plaques bearing the initials AB which he proposed to drop over Lympne! He had also asked for the airfield to show a single red light as a beacon. He indicated March 25 or later as the likely date for the flight.

Harris also noted that the Attaché would not be able to contact Kiroff again when the British Legation left Sofia. Presumably the departure was prompted by Bulgaria formally joining the Axis on March 1 and the almost immediate arrival of German troops in the country. Douglas then passed the revised recognition procedure and likely date to Leigh-Mallory.

Later in March the plan was refined. Hitler was to be removed immediately on arrival at Lympne and taken directly to the Air Ministry in London. For this purpose a Ford six-seater vehicle and two motorcycles were stationed at Lympne. The plan to take Hitler to the Air Ministry in the centre of London is just one of several oddities of the whole tale. Nowhere does the file hint at the involvement of any of the expected intelligence bodies, the whole scheme having the flavour of a private enterprise by the RAF.

In mid-May it was decided to keep the precautions in place for a further two weeks from the 17th 'in view of recent events' (presumably the unexpected arrival of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess in Scotland on the 10th). However, on the 28th, Bottomley (Harris' successor as DCAS) advised Douglas that, in the absence of fresh information and since the target date had long passed, the special arrangements were to be cancelled with effect from June 1.

In 1956, when the file came up for downgrading or destruction, it was noted that Baur was believed to be still alive and that therefore the file should not be downgraded below 'Secret', this probably explaining the absence, as John Fricker noted, of any mention of the tale in the autobiographies of Sholto Douglas or Harris. The file appears to have been downgraded to 'Open' status in 1972. Baur died in 1993, having spent the immediate post-war years in the hands of the Russians.

I only came across this file by accident while researching another book and, as with any RAF- related research, a single file will reveal only a fraction of the story. No doubt some diligent research into the papers of the Foreign Office, Intelligence, Chiefs of Staff Committee and Cabinet might well fill some of the gaps. Ultimately though, the major unresolved questions do not lie on the British side of the affair, but elsewhere: who was 'Kiroff'? What were his motives? And for whom, if anyone, was he working?

Lost Nazi nuke-project uranium found in Dutch scrapyard

2010-02-21T21:52:00.000+08:00

Atomic CSI team fingerprints 1940s 'Joachimsthal' metals

By Lewis Page

EU nuke boffins say that mysterious bits of uranium found last year in a Dutch scrapyard originated in the Nazi nuclear-weapons programme of the 1940s.

Forensic nuke scientists at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) traced the two pieces of metal - described as a cube and a plate - back to their exact origins and dates. Apparently both came from ores extracted at the "Joachimsthal" mine in what is now the Czech Republic, though the two are from different production batches.

The cube, according to specialists at the JRC's Institute for Transuranium Elements (ITU), was produced in 1943 for the Nazi nuclear programme and was used in the lab of famous boffin Werner Heisenberg (of uncertainty principle fame). The plate was apparently part of experiments by Heisenberg's collaborator Karl Wirtz.

Most historical analysis, with hindsight, suggests that the Nazi nuclear research programme never got very close to developing an atomic weapon. There was no equivalent of the Manhattan Project; rather, different lines of research were followed in different labs. Furthermore the Germans were hampered by having driven many top physicists out of the country with their anti-Semitic policies, and also by drafting other boffins into the army to fight as ordinary soldiers.

Not content with that, the Nazi leadership also chose to clash with the few top brains they had left. At one point Reichsfuhrer Himmler suggested that Heisenberg should be treated as a "White Jew", with presumably fatal consequences. Himmler later changed his mind, but this climate can hardly have encouraged Heisenberg to do his best work.

The halting progress of the Germans was largely unknown to the Allies, however, a factor which prompted the crash efforts of the Manhattan project. In particular, German plans to acquire large quantities of heavy water from Norway for use as a reactor moderator aroused intense worry among the Allies. A sequence of clandestine operations and bombing raids - by the French and British secret services, Norwegian resistance fighters, spec-ops troops and allied air forces - took place, which saw heavy water and its production tech stolen, repeatedly blown up and in one case sunk aboard a sabotaged ferry.

Though the Telemark operations were some of the greatest spec-ops successes ever seen, they may not in fact have been all that critical. After the war, Heisenberg said that he and his colleagues had always been doubtful of the potential of nuclear fission as an explosive. Furthermore, they had taken good care not to big that aspect of the research up to their Nazi masters, for reasons of self-interest.

"We definitely did not want to get into this bomb business," said Heisenberg. "I wouldn't like to idealize this; we did this also for our personal safety. We thought that the probability that this would lead to atomic bombs during the War was nearly zero. If we had done otherwise, and if many thousand people had been put to work on it and then if nothing had been developed, this could have had extremely disagreeable consequences for us."
Nowadays the Allied nations are once again deeply concerned about hostile countries developing nuclear weapons. According to the Euro nuke-forensics team at the JRC-ITU:

A key international topic today is the work of preventing the spread of nuclear weapon technology and illicit trafficking of nuclear materials that can be used for the production of nuclear weapons or so-called dirty bombs.

They've just set up (http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/jrc/index.cfm?id=1410&obj_id=9930&dt_code=NWS&lang=en) a new "large geometry secondary ion mass spectrometer" which they're very proud of, which should be very handy for nobbling nuclear malefactors.

Families of Altered Wars - Comics

2010-01-31T11:10:00.000+08:00

Heinkel He P1073.02

2010-01-29T23:08:00.002+08:00

There are many designs within the P1073 series including both twin and single engine designs. One in particular had a single jet engine mounted atop of the fuselage ‘piggy-back’ style and was developed in to the now familiar He 162 Salamander.

The design incorporated a forward swept main wing and the two engines mounted one either side of the forward fuselage on very short pontoons which where angled slightly inwards at the intakes. There was also an indentation on the underside of the fuselage to house a single bomb.

There is no indication of where armament would have been housed, but I guess the solid nose would have been the ideal location.

Volksjaeger -- People's Fighter -- was a term that showed just how badly the war was going for the Nazis. The Germans reasoned that if a simple jet-powered fighter could be built by the thousands, the planes could be flown against the Allied bomber streams by barely-trained pilots, thus providing the Germans some breathing room. Heinkel, who had built the first jet aircraft, had come up with a new design that had a higher Mach number than the Messerschmitt Me 262 - the P.1073. This aircraft had a swept wing and a V-tail. Numerous problems had been caused by long intake and exhaust ducts on the new engines so the powerplants were mounted in pods above and below the fuselage.

However, time was running out for the Germans and instead of having more technologically advanced jets, they wanted a simple aircraft that would have a maximum speed of 466 mph, operational endurance of 30 minutes, and a takeoff run of less than 550 yards. The specification was dated 10 September 1944 and issued to Arlo, Blohm and Voss, Focke-Wulf, Fieseler, Heinkel, Junkers, and Siebel.

Messerschmitt refused to submit a Volksjaeger design and issued the statement, "The Me 262 must form the backbone of the Luftwaffe air defense in the deciding battles of the spring of 1945. The Me 262 is a reality, the Volksjaeger only a hope. I cannot understand the need to develop a further aircraft when we already possess a superior machine. Our present jet superiority will not last. The enemy has proved that he is capable of overwhelming us given his massive resources. He has already flown jet aircraft, and they will go into service in the spring. We must also reckon with the possibility that he will engage us with jet aircraft this winter too, and these could even be superior to the Me 262."

The Gatehouse.

2010-01-14T12:08:00.001+08:00

Welcome

to The Gatehouse. Since 2006 this website has provided a gateway to the world of steampunk online; and to dieselpunk, since 2007. We offer articles, galleries, a well-staffed blog and one of the oldest steampunk communities on the web, the Smoking Lounge.

When this website started, the number of websites and blogs dedicated to steampunk was very small indeed. Dieselpunk was practically unheard of at the time and our content in the area was mostly limited to picture galleries. Instead this section features exclusively articles nowadays; for the more graphic stuff, head over to our blog: the true gateway to steampunk and dieselpunk today.

Since July 2008, The Gatehouse also publishes an online magazine every two months, the Gatehouse Gazette. Filled with genre-related articles about history and fashion, interviews, fiction and reviews, the Gazette has become an undeniable voice in what is now no longer an obscure genre of science fiction but a movement that spans wordwide.

Our community, the Smoking Lounge, has always been part of the dynamic of The Gatehouse. Several of its members came to contribute to the magazine while oftentimes, features at the blog are inspired by posts made at the forums. New members are always most welcome; please, consider joining us.
—Ottens

Dieselpunk

The term “dieselpunk” was first coined to describe a darker, dirtier side of steampunk, informed by cyberpunk sensibilities, set in a post-steampunk era with a higher industrial level of development. Like steampunk colonizes the past of Victorian-Edwardian Scientific Romances and Voyages Extraordinaires with the present, dieselpunk transports modern-day technologies and attitudes into the era of mid-century pulp fiction—pulp refering to the inexpensive fiction magazines widely published from the 1920s through the 1950s, typically remembered for their sensational and exploitative stories and thrilling cover art.

Like steampunk exists within the framework of speculative fiction, dieselpunk resides under the banner of Pulp, specifically characterized by the rise of petroleum power and technocratic perception, incorporating neo-noir elements and sharing themes with Adventure Pulp.

Crickey, Secret Nazi stuff

In the world of dieselpunk, where the Great Depression never arrived, World War II may still be fought as a prolonged cold war, with the German Reich as a global power stretching from the shores of Western Europe to the plains of Russia to the torrid desert of North Africa. Under the pressure of the ongoing war effort, German science is typically depicted as having continued its experimenting with biotechnologies, sparking off a genetic revolution of bio-mods, clones and organ harvesting.

Dieselpunk explores this darkest side of Nazi terror and depicts it in all its dreadful glory. We find the occult heavily exaggerated to suit storytelling, the search for a supersoldier invented to make the Nazi obsession with the notion of a master race seem more horrifying yet, and strange technologies of war developed and fire reigning down the skies.

What if Hitler had survived? (And how he could have escaped the bunker)

2009-12-11T22:52:00.000+08:00

By Guy Walters

There were few better pilots in the Third Reich than Hanna Reitsch, and none more loyal to its leader, Adolf Hitler.
Her flying skills and fanaticism were fully displayed on the night of April 26, 1945, when Reitsch landed her small Fieseler Storch plane on a makeshift airstrip on the Tiergarten in the centre of war-ravaged Berlin.

Accompanied by General von Greim, the head of the Luftwaffe, Reitsch made her way to Hitler's bunker, where she found a scene of chaos.

Conspiracy theories: A computer-generated image of what Hitler would have looked like had he survived into the 1960s

Drunken Wehrmacht officers caroused with secretaries, while nearby artillery shells provided a rumbling background soundtrack of impending doom.

According to most accounts, Reitsch's mission was little more than an expression of her complete devotion to her Fuhrer.
The Hitler she found in the dying days of the war was not a well man, his gait shuffling, his face lined, his body coursing with a noxious torrent of prescribed drugs.

She expressed a wish to die alongside her ailing hero in an epic scene of Wagnerian drama.

But Hitler insisted that the fight was not over, and that although his body was weak, his will still radiated the same power as it had back in the 1930s.

Hitler informed the 33-year-old pilot that her next task would be the most important she would ever perform - she was going to help him escape.

The Fuhrer told Reitsch that although the battle for Berlin was surely lost, the battle for the hearts and minds of the German people was still not over, and that Nazism would always survive so long as he was still alive.

Four days later, just after 11pm on April 30, three figures cautiously emerged into the flickering gloom of the Chancellery garden. Two members of the party were female - one was Reitsch, and the other was the newly married Eva Hitler, better known to the world as Eva Braun.

The third figure was wearing the uniform of an army corporal, and his face was divested of its trademark toothbrush moustache.

He carried a Walther PPK 7.65mm pistol, as well as three vials of cyanide - one for each of the group should they be captured by the Russians.

Sidestepping shell holes, burst water mains and corpses, the small party eventually reached Reitsch's small aircraft on the Tiergarten.

Although she had expressed severe misgivings that the aircraft was large enough for three people, Hitler was nevertheless insistent that he take his new wife.

The skull fragment the Russians hold which they claim belongs to Hitler

Reitsch was accustomed to dangerous flights, but this journey was like no other. With its extra passenger, the plane only just managed to clear the wreckage of a shattered Panzer halfway down the Tiergarten, and as soon as they were airborne, it seemed as though every Soviet gun opened up on them.

The explosions tossed the Storch around like a feather, and it required all of Reitsch's skill to keep them in the air. Both the Fuhrer and his bride were sick - yet Frau Hitler was still able to crack a quip that not many brides had honeymoons that had started quite like this.

When the plane reached 20,000ft, it settled into a smoother flight, safe from anti-aircraft shells. Hitler peered down to look at the blazing centre of his once glorious Reich, and vowed that he would rebuild it twice the size.

From that altitude, the Fuhrer would not have been able to see whether his orders were being carried out faithfully by his valet, Heinz Linge, but he was confident that they would be.

Linge was a loyal servant, and when Hitler had asked him to arrange for the execution of a middle-aged man and a younger woman, and then to dress their corpses in the clothes of Hitler and his wife, he knew Linge would oblige.

He also knew that Linge would make sure that the bodies would be cremated beyond recognition with some 200 litres of petrol - a scarce enough commodity even for the occupants of the Fuhrerbunker.

After a two-hour flight, the plane reached its destination - the coastal town of Travemunde, some 160 miles northwest of Berlin. There, moored in the water, was an enormous six-engine BV 222 flying-boat, its fuselage marked with the identifier V7.

With a range of nearly 4,000 miles, the aircraft was the ideal vehicle to spirit Hitler away from the clutches of his enemies.
Captained by Colonel Werner Baumbach and navigated by Captain Ernst Koenig, the plane took off at a little after four o'clock in the morning, and headed towards the North Sea.

Its destination was Greenland, its icy wastes forming the perfect redoubt from which Hitler could plot the resurgence of his vile creed.

A fire-damaged tunic at the Central Armed Forces museum in Moscow - one of the items seized by the Soviet Army from Hitler's bunker in ruined Berlin

Unlike many Nazis, Hitler had no wish to travel to South America, which he knew would be the first place his pursuers would look.

After 13 hours, the mighty BV 222 landed on the near-frozen waters near the village of Ittoqqortoormiit on the eastern coast of Greenland.

The huts of a German weather station on a small island a few miles out to sea constituted, for the time being, the final destination of a man who had unleashed the most destructive conflict in history.

But could such a scenario have happened? Is it possible that Hitler did not commit suicide with his wife in his bunker on April 30 - and that he actually escaped?

After all, in the years after the war, doubts about Hitler's death were frequently expressed.

With a lack of firm proof that the dictator had perished, the Russians initially claimed that Hitler was being sheltered by the Americans and the British.

But it turned out later that many of these early Soviet allegations were part of the deliberate disinformation game which was taking place at the birth of the Cold War - it suited Stalin's propaganda aims to smear the Allies with the idea that they were protecting Hitler.

However, there were many supposed sightings of the Fuhrer, and the Allies were obliged to take them seriously.
Some believed that Hitler had escaped on board U-977, a German submarine laden with valuables that had supposedly escaped to Argentina after the war. Although there was no truth in this 'submarine route' - in fact no ranking Nazis are known to have escaped in such a way - there were plenty of other theories.

In September 1945, both Hitler and his private secretary, Martin Bormann, were reported to have sailed out of Hamburg on a luxury mahogany yacht, and to have hidden in one of the many inlets and islands on the Schleswig-Holstein coast.

Russians blow up Hitler's air raid shelter - known as his Tombstone - where he and his mistress, Eva Braun, are believed to have committed suicide

Once again, after a thorough investigation by the British, the story was found to be groundless.

Even the most absurd claims were taken seriously. In October 1945, the British Legation in Copenhagen felt obliged to inform the Foreign Office that a Danish woman had reported that a friend of hers had dreamed that Hitler was disguised as a monk in a monastery in Algeciras in Spain.

As the supposedly psychic Dane had also had accurate premonitions about RAF raids during the war, the Legation told the head of the German department that the story 'might conceivably be of interest to you'. It is not known whether any enquiries were made.

In December that year, the U.S. War Department's Counter Espionage department - X-2 - discovered there was a possibility that Hitler had in fact escaped to the Balearic islands.

According to an informant, Hitler had landed by submarine in Majorca, and had holed up at the Hotel Formentor with a group of nuclear scientists. An investigation was launched, and the story was soon found to be yet more nonsense.
But still the rumours persisted, sometimes abetted by those who should have been more wary. In April 1947, an American former intelligence officer, William F. Heimlich, told the Press that he believed Hitler was alive and hiding somewhere in Europe.

Describing himself as the officer in charge of searching for Hitler at the end of the war, Heimlich declared that Hitler and Martin Bormann 'left the air raid bunker together before the date of their purported deaths and certain persons helped them escape from Berlin'.

Like so many other 'experts', Heimlich was unable to furnish evidence to support his story.

Nevertheless, he did feel confident enough to rubbish other accounts that claimed that Hitler was living in the Antarctic, and that Bormann was living in Cairo. But Heimlich's stories were no more truthful than those he so readily dismissed.
As the years wore on, theories about Hitler's fate grew increasingly outlandish.

By the 1970s, some cranks were even speculating that Hitler was in fact living on the Moon, biding his time on a Nazi lunar base built in the 1950s.

Suicide pact: Adolf Hitler and mistress Eva Braun killed themselves in 1945

But even if one casts such rubbish aside, it is important to remember that it was certainly feasible that Hitler could have escaped from his bunker.

After all, many senior Nazis had done so, and the escape from Berlin by aircraft, as recounted above, is just one way in which the dictator might have fled.

So if Hitler had ended up somewhere far-flung such as Greenland, what might he have done? Although Germany was thoroughly controlled by the Allies, there were still plenty of Germans who secretly remained loyal to the Nazi cause.
Broadcasts by Hitler might have helped to foment a resistance movement. However, without access to a regular supply of arms, it is likely that any uprising would have soon been crushed. Four huge Allied armies occupied the country for decades, after all.

The Allies, too, would have done their best to find Hitler, knowing that as long as he remained alive, so would Nazism.
And while many Nazis were not tracked down after the war owing to a lack of resources and political will, every effort would, of course, have been expended to hunt Hitler.

Perhaps this would have forced Hitler to flee reluctantly to South America, where he could at least have been sheltered by the Argentine dictator Juan Peron. However, even there he would have been in danger - the prospect of a large bounty offered by the Allies would surely have loosened the tongue of someone in the Nazi community or the Argentine secret police.

Once Hitler had been found, the Argentine dictator would have come under the most immense international pressure to release his 'guest'. A mixture of diplomatic sanctions and economic bribes would have forced Peron, who had a weak grip on power, to surrender his charge.

At some point in the early 1950s, Hitler would have been brought to face justice at another Nuremberg trial and he would have been hanged after what would have been the trial of the century.

Although such a chain of events was certainly feasible, it is a mistake to confuse a possibility for likelihood. The truth is, the notion of Hitler's escape goes against all the evidence.

The most authoritative investigation of the dictator's death was carried out by the historian and MI6 officer Hugh Trevor-Roper, in which he interviewed many of those who had been present during Hitler's final hours.

Trevor-Roper was able to demonstrate convincingly that Hitler had in fact killed himself, and that his corpse and that of Eva Braun were incinerated.

As well as Trevor-Roper's account, many of those who served in the Fuhrer bunker, such as Hanna Reitsch and Heinz Linge, have also published their memoirs, all of which - with a few minor discrepancies aside - show that Hitler took poison and shot himself with his Walther PPK.

If Hitler had really escaped then all these people would have to be either participants in a massive conspiracy, or wildly mistaken. Both of these alternatives are so unlikely as to be ridiculous.

But what of the fragment of skull? Can we take the Russians' reassurance that it is genuine at face value?

In fact, the fragment has been dismissed as evidence on previous occasions, as the bullet hole is not nearly large enough to be the exit hole of a round fired from a Walther PPK at close range.

And the fire damage is not nearly extensive enough - Hitler's body was almost completely burned, and any piece of skull or bone that survived would have been far more burnt than the Moscow fragment.

In addition, if Hitler did escape, he left the bottom part of his head in Berlin, as charred pieces of his lower and upper jaw were unearthed in the German capital in 1945 and matched to X-rays of Hitler's skull and teeth.

They also matched the details in the testimony left by Hitler's dentist, Hugo Blaschke. However, the jaw fragment has since been hidden away in KGB archives.

But if the skull fragment is not from Hitler, then who did it belong to? One theory is that it came from Eva Braun, but as she did not die from a gunshot wound, the fragment cannot be hers. The truth is, many thousands were killed in Berlin in 1945, and the fragment could have belonged to any one of them.

The most likely explanation is that the fragment of skull belonged to yet another victim of the horror that Hitler had created. The only thing that Hitler escaped from was justice.

• Guy Walters is the author of Hunting Evil: The Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped (Bantam, £18.99)

Aerial Images by Daring Allies Revealing Hitler's Weapons

2009-11-24T20:13:00.000+08:00

KOMPAS.com - Precise as a hole punch through a sheet of paper, craters surround a Nazi doodlebug factory in an extraordinary image showing the devastation wreaked by an Allied bombing raid.

The date is September 2, 1944 and the place Peenemunde, a village on the Baltic, where the terrifying weapons Adolf Hitler hoped would win the war for Germany were designed and tested. The image is astonishing enough, but how it was taken is even more startling.

For it comes from an archive of aerial photographs snapped by daring pilots - sometimes flying as low as 50ft - during secret reconnaissance missions in the Second World War. Others in the collection convey the human suffering experienced amid the fighting, including rare shots of a Nazi slave labour camp and of the notorious Colditz prisoner of war camp.

Until now the pictures have been kept behind closed doors. But they are revealed to the public for the first time today via the internet amid a painstaking cataloguing process. Alan Williams, manager of the National Collection of Aerial Photography which houses the photos, said: 'The archive literally shows the world at war.'

Long before the days of Google Earth, the highly skilled airmen who took them flew alone, by day and night, in unarmed Spitfires relying on their wits as they risked their lives to capture the images on their plane-mounted cameras. Sometimes their planes were painted pink, as the unusual colour proved very good at hiding the aircraft against a background of low cloud. For high altitude missions, the planes were painted a dark shade of blue.

But often they still found themselves targeted by anti-aircraft missiles. Hundreds of them never returned home.
Those that did brought with them photos vital to the war effort. Expert photographic interpreters studied the pictures using optical instruments such as stereoscopes to view them in 3D to build up detailed information for intelligence reports and models used in military planning for operations such as the D-Day landings.

The 'detective' teams, who were headquartered in a stately home in Buckinghamshire at RAF Medmenham - MI4's Allied Central Interpretation Unit - included Oxbridge academics, geographers and archaeologists. First launched from ski-slope ramps by powered catapults in northern France, they killed more than 6,000 people in south east England. Winston Churchill ordered Operation Crossbow - a plan to destroy V1 production and launch sites - and some 36,000 tons of bombs were dropped on these targets.

The photo of the destruction this caused at Peenemunde comes from the Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (Tara), which contains more than 10million photographs, including pictures taken by the RAF up to the 1990s and by the Luftwaffe. The photo of the slave labour camp near Mainz in Germany, taken on June 2, 1945, is one of only a handful of images that remain of the factory site because it was dismantled quickly after the war.

Slave labour camps were concentration camps where interned inmates had to do hard physical labour under inhumane conditions and cruel treatment. This one provided workers for a heavy machinery company. In the photos of Colditz - the high security castle where Allied officers who had repeatedly escaped from other camps were held - prisoners can be seen in the courtyard of the high security prison on April 10, 1945, just days before US forces took over the area.

Other images show vehicles disembarking from landing craft on D-Day, and the so-called bridge over the River Kwai, part of the Thai-Burma railway project that cost the lives of thousands of prisoners of war. Mr Williams said: 'The skill of the photo reconnaissance pilot was incredible - they were among the best pilots in the air force.

'As so many of them lost their lives, the archive has become a memorial to them and the events on the ground they photographed.

'How they could take the photos they did is astonishing. When you remember they were taken in combat, and often being shot at - it's astounding.'

All the photos were stored for more than 50 years at Keele University before Tara was moved to Edinburgh last year to join The National Collection of Aerial Photography. Specialist staff are continuing the lengthy task of researching, cataloguing and digitising the images, which is expected to take many years.

Around 4,000 images from the archive will go online initially with more to be added. The archive can be viewed at aerial.rcahms.gov.uk

Wunderflugzeug III

2009-10-26T15:51:00.000+08:00

Wunderflugzeug II

2009-10-26T15:49:00.004+08:00

Wunderflugzeug I

2009-10-26T15:49:00.000+08:00

Albert Speer: Size Matters - Visions of Space

2009-10-08T18:52:00.000+08:00

Looking within the horrors of the Third Reich, Hitler's chief architect, Albert Speer, designed some of the most powerful buildings of the 20th century. This documentary, another in the Visions of Space series on the BBC,, looks into the life of the man and his grand vision.

Missiles for the Fatherland: Peenemünde, National Socialism, and the V-2 Missile.

2009-10-08T18:44:00.000+08:00

Michael B. Petersen. Missiles for the Fatherland: Peenemünde, National Socialism, and the V-2 Missile. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xii + 276 pp. $80.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-88270-5.

Reviewed by Richard H. Beyler (History Department, Portland State University)
Published on H-German (October, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher

Heaven and Hell of the Missiles

Michael B. Petersen's account of missile development in Germany before and during World War II provides a fresh perspective on the historical literature on National Socialism and V-2 research. Missiles for the Fatherland offers a compelling description of the social processes that constituted a cohesive, productive community of rocketry experts, focusing on the Peenemünde research site. Although some of the Peenemünde researchers were convinced and active National Socialists, as Petersen demonstrates, ideological commitment was not the glue that held the community together. Rather, the deciding factor was a "quotidian enculturation" (p. 3) into a professional community. Peenemünde offered an atmosphere of excitement and achievement--to be sure, often under enormous pressure for high performance--alongside pleasant amenities. Peenemünde was a "paradise" for engineers that afforded them a "fantastic life," according to participants. Regardless of individuals' varying degrees of ideological enthusiasm, practical acceptance of the Nazi agenda for Germany was virtually unquestioned among the research site managers and helped determine the role of German scientists in the Holocaust.

The willing embrace of militarism and racialism among these researchers ultimately supported the heinous side of the engineers' paradise. Research there led to the exploitation of conscript workers and, eventually, hellish conditions for slave laborers at the underground Mittelwerk rocket factory at Dora-Mittelbau in Thuringia, which was constructed and put into operation after the British bombing raid on Peenemünde on August 17-18, 1943. As Petersen demonstrates, use of prison labor was not foisted upon the unknowing or unwilling civilians by interfering SS outsiders, but was rather an integral part of the development of the missile production process in the context of Nazi war plans. Petersen argues for a causal relationship between the solidarity of the Peenemünde professional community and that community's collaboration with the Nazi state. That is, the former did not impede the latter, but rather enabled it.

After a brief review of rocketry in the Weimar Republic, the core of Petersen's story begins with the consolidation of all missile research under the aegis of the German army by the mid-1930s. Subsequent imposition of rigorous standards for performance and testing brought about a culture of military discipline throughout the project that extended to civilian employees. The primary research center on the northern part of the Baltic island of Usedom, near the village of Peenemünde, became the physical embodiment of this controlled, disciplined regime. Of particular interest is Petersen's analysis of the everyday professional and social life at the research site for the engineers and managers who came to live and work there. Performance standards were excruciating and schedules were intense; nevertheless, participants repeatedly described an exciting and rewarding atmosphere in an almost resort-like setting. After the start of the war, delight in the work at hand created a further sense of privilege and pride among the researchers. Walter Dornberger and Wernher von Braun, for example, emerge here as demanding but astute managers who inspired widespread respect and even affection among their subordinates.

Petersen pays particular attention to the strict enforcement of secrecy in the life and work of Peenemünde. This aspect of the project coincided with the military's successful monopoly on missile research during the Nazi era, but was not a product of Nazi ideology per se. Peenemünde, Petersen suggests, was almost a secret society. Its members, workers, and managers both constructed and adhered to a strict code of rules that continually reinforced the special nature of the work there. Access to the research facility was tightly controlled, for instance, using a series of coveted, gradated security badges. Use of euphemisms and code words distinguished insiders from outsiders, heightening the cachet for those who understood the highly specialized jargon. Leaks about research in progress and the site carried severe punishments, including deportation to a concentration camp or even death.The security requirements also aided acquisition of resources--even scarce material could be requisitioned without detailed explanation. This ominous security regime, Petersen argues, heightened community solidarity and provided a sense of belonging and importance, especially for the managerial elite charged with oversight.

The same secrecy that created the crucial sense of solidarity and privilege for engineers and managers also conditioned the increasingly harsh exploitation of production workers. Foreign conscript labor was part of the design of Peenemünde from its early days, and these workers faced exploitation and harsh conditions. With the shift of production to the underground site, forced laborers replaced conscripts. Supplied by the SS concentration camps, these slave laborers were seen as no more than an expendable resource. Demands for project secrecy played a major role in this change, since the complete disposability of the latter group relieved managers from pressure to ensure worker discretion. At no point, Petersen finds, did the V-2 program leadership, on either the military or civilian side, ever object to or resist the use of conscript and slave labor. To be sure, gratuitous cruelty to prisoners was limited to a minority of the civilian managers--by regulation, punishment was left to the SS. Moreover, workers with valued skills, such as machine-tool operators, were usually treated with somewhat less harshness. These acts of seeming humanity, however, underline and convey the extent to which the V-2 project regarded its production workers as anything but human.

Petersen's book offers an interesting contrast to earlier studies of German missile research, which have highlighted the role of individual scientists. Such a work is Michael Neufeld's 2007 biography of Braun, a psychologically astute portrait of a singular individual. Although Petersen's more compact book also includes technical detail and acknowledges the importance of personalities in the research community, he concludes that the ways that individuals are acculturated in communities are crucial to our understanding of this period. Thus, in investigating the intersection between the search for material technology and the social engineering of the V-2, Missiles for the Fatherland enriches our understanding of the technical and social history of missile research, development, and production during the National Socialist era.

Operation unthinkable: How Churchill wanted to recruit defeated Nazi troops and drive Russia out of Eastern Europe

2009-08-26T23:05:00.001+08:00

By Max Hastings

Next week sees the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. One man towered above all others at this perilous time - Winston Churchill.

In a major two-week series, war historian Max Hastings casts new light on him.

Here, in part nine, he tells how Churchill became a Cold War prophet in foreseeing the menace of the Soviet Union...

Ahead of the game: Winston Churchill foresaw the menace of the Soviet Union and began making plans to go to war with Russia

When Winston Churchill learned in the spring of 1945 that the Americans were going to halt their advance on Berlin from the west and leave Hitler's capital to the mercies of the Red Army of the Soviet Union, he was furious.

The United States government had made an absolute commitment not to let post-war Europe separate out into distinct areas of political influence. But now this was precisely what was being allowed to happen.

Russian behaviour was worsening by the day as Stalin's all-conquering men rolled up the countries in the east and made them satellites of Moscow, in defiance of agreements made by the heads of state at the Yalta conference only weeks earlier.

Keep on going eastwards was Churchill's advice to the Allied armies, until the Russians showed some willingness to keep their side of the bargain about the future shape of Europe.

Meanwhile, Stalin was in paranoid mood, fearful that the West was planning to make its own deal with the Germans, cut him out and possibly even turn on him.

He was deeply suspicious of what Churchill was up to. 'That man is capable of anything,' he told his army commander, Marshal Zhukov.

But Churchill wasn't up to anything, because the Americans wouldn't let him. They showed no interest in diplomatic brinkmanship with the Kremlin, despite the vital issues for the future of the world that were at stake. Washington wanted no confrontation with Moscow.

Churchill found it hard coming to terms with the era that was dawning. Back in 1941, he had assumed that when the war ended the United States and the British Empire would together form the most powerful armed and economic bloc the world had ever seen. The Soviet Union would be struggling. 'They will need our aid for reconstruction far more than we shall need theirs,' he said then.

By 1945, the Soviets were vastly stronger, and the British much weaker, than he had expected. As for the U.S. commitment to Anglo-American interests, in Europe or anywhere else, this was more tenuous than it had ever been.

Menace: Soviet leader Josef Stalin at the Potsdam conference where he met Truman and Churchill to make arrangements for post-war Europe in 1945

In the cold light of day, the prime minister understood all this. As Russian forces were allowed to proceed to their agreed halting point on the River Elbe, he summed up his fears in a letter to his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden.

'Terrible things have happened. A tide of Russian domination is sweeping forward . . . After it is over, the territories under Russian control will include the Baltic provinces, all of eastern Germany, all Czechoslovakia, a large part of Austria, the whole of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

'This constitutes one of the most melancholy events in the history of Europe and one to which there has been no parallel. It is to an early and speedy showdown and settlement with Russia that we must now turn our hopes.'

It was a diplomatic showdown he was referring to at this point. He wanted the Americans and the British to hang tough in deliberations with Moscow.

But the difficulty was that the Allies were in an uncharted new world. To the vast shock of his countrymen, who had been kept in the dark about how ill he was, President Roosevelt died on April 12.

Into the shoes of this towering figure stepped vice-president Harry Truman.

Victory in Europe: Winston Churchill waving to crowds gathered in Whitehall on VE Day

In the first weeks of the new President's tenure, there were indications that he was ready to deal much more toughly with the Russians than had Roosevelt in his last months. But he was no more willing than his predecessor to risk an armed clash with the Soviet Union for the sake of the overrun Poland or indeed any other European nation.

Washington believed that, with the U.S. army and the Red Army facing each other on the banks of the Elbe, there was no virtue in empty posturing.

Nor did Churchill's combativeness towards Moscow find much resonance among his own people. For four years the British had embraced the Russians as heroes and comrades-in-arms, ignorant of the absence of reciprocal enthusiasm.

Beyond a few score men and women at the summit of the British war machine, little was known of the perfidy and savagery of the Soviets as they smashed their way through Eastern Europe.

Jubilant: Londoners dancing in Piccadilly Circus on after Churchill had broadcast to the nation to say the war with Germany was over

VE-Day was proclaimed on May 8, 1945. At 3pm the prime minister broadcast to the British people, telling them the Germans had signed an act of unconditional surrender, and 'the German war is therefore at an end'.

He recalled Britain's lonely struggle, and the gradual accession of great allies: 'Finally almost the whole world was combined against the evil-doers, who are now prostrate before us. We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing; but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead.'

Japan had still to be beaten. 'We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task, both at home and abroad. Advance, Britannia! Long live the cause of freedom! God save the King.'

From a balcony in Whitehall that evening, he addressed a vast, cheering crowd, who sang Land Of Hope And Glory and For He's A Jolly Good Fellow. But back in his rooms, all he could talk about was his dismay at Soviet barbarism in the east.

While the world celebrated, he spent the first days of peace plunged in deepest gloom about the fate of Poland.

At Downing Street, he invited the Soviet ambassador, Feodor Gusev, to lunch and gave him a dressing down.

The Russian recorded how Churchill 'roared' as he listed a catalogue of grievances about Poland, about communist forces trying to seize Trieste and British representatives being barred from Prague, Vienna and Berlin.

Truman agreed that urgent talks were needed. Yet what if talking to Stalin got nowhere? Was there anything the Western Allies could do? Churchill thought there was. They could go to war again.

Within days of Germany's surrender, he had astounded his chiefs of staff by inquiring whether Anglo-American forces might launch an offensive to drive back the Soviets. He requested the military planners to consider means to 'impose upon Russia the will of the United States and British Empire' to secure 'a square deal for Poland'.

They were told to assume the full support of British and American public opinion and that they would be able 'to count on the use of German manpower and what remains of German industrial capacity'.

In other words, the beaten Germans would be mobilised on the West's side. There was even a target date for such an assault - July 1, 1945.

The Foreign Office - though not the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden himself - recoiled in horror from Churchill's bellicosity, as did the chief of the Army, Sir Alan Brooke. 'Winston gives me the feeling of already longing for another war!' he noted in his diary.

(Indeed at the Potsdam conference in July 1945, Churchill's inside knowledge that the Americans had just completed the first successful atomic bomb test emboldened the PM in his crusade to bring Stalin to heel. Pushing his chin out and scowling, he told Sir Alan: 'We can tell them that if they insist on doing this or that, well we can just blot out Moscow, then Stalingrad, then Kiev and so on.')

Nonetheless, the British Army high command faithfully executed Churchill's wishes by examining scenarios for military action against the Russians. It required feats of imagination unprecedented even among the many wild ideas they'd had to consider during his war premiership.

Needless to say, given the acute sensitivity of their draft proposal for what was termed Operation Unthinkable, security was at a premium. Needless to say, too, Stalin learned very quickly what was going on in the British camp.

One of the many spies he had in Whitehall swiftly conveyed to Moscow tidings of an instruction that had gone out from London to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the senior British commander in Germany, urging him to stockpile captured German weapons for possible future use.

But, the Kremlin apart, Churchill's promptings remained a state secret for more than half-a-century until confirmed in papers released by the National Archive in 1998.

In the report the planners drew up for the PM, they were quick with their reservations, pointing out that the Russians could resort to the same tactics they had employed with such success against the Germans, giving ground amid the infinite spaces of the Soviet Union.

Churchill with Roosevelt who died in April 1945 - the British PM hoped his successor Truman would deal more toughly with the Russians but he was no more willing to risk an armed conflict than Roosevelt

'There is virtually no limit to the distance it would be necessary for the Allies to penetrate into Russia in order to render further resistance impossible.'

The planners estimated that 47 Allied divisions would be needed for an offensive, 14 of them tank divisions. A further 40 divisions would have to be kept in reserve for defensive or occupation tasks. Against this, the report said, the Russians could muster twice as many men and tanks.

It concluded that these odds 'clearly render the launching of an offensive a hazardous undertaking. If we are to embark on war with Russia, we must be prepared to commit to a total war, which will be both long and costly'.

On the question of re-arming and putting the defeated German army back in the field, the planners were concerned that veterans who had already fought in the bitter battles on the Eastern Front might be reluctant to repeat the experience.

The chiefs of staff were never under any delusions about the impracticability of an offensive against the Russians to liberate Poland. Brooke wrote in his diary that 'the idea is of course fantastic and the chances of success quite impossible. There is no doubt that from now onwards Russia is all-powerful in Europe'.

All the evidence suggested that Operation Unthinkable was just that - unthinkable.

Potsdam: President Truman (centre) with Josef Stalin and Clement Attlee who participated in the conference with Churchill

An outline plan went to the PM on June 8, along with the written opinion of the chiefs that 'once hostilities began. ..we should be committed to a protracted war against heavy odds'. There would be no hope of defeating the Russians without 'a large proportion of the vast resources of the United States'.

What, then, if the Americans didn't stay the course? Churchill was alarmed. If the Americans withdrew from such a fight, Britain would be left horribly exposed, since the Russians had the power to advance to the North Sea and the Atlantic. It would be 1940 all over again.

'Pray have a study made,' he asked in a note, 'of how then we could defend our island, assuming that France and the Low Countries were powerless to resist the Russian advance to the sea.'

But then it was as if he came to his senses because he added that the codeword 'Unthinkable' should be retained, 'so that the staffs will realise that this remains a precautionary study of what, I hope, is still a highly improbable event.'

Before sending the note, he took his red pen and altered the last three words from 'highly improbable event' to 'purely hypothetical contingency'.

The chiefs responded to his inquiries about what would happen in the event of a Soviet advance to the Channel. Russian naval strength, they concluded, was too limited to render an early amphibious invasion of Britain likely. They ruled out a Soviet airborne assault.

It seemed more likely, they suggested, that Moscow would resort to intensive rocket bombardment, on a scale more destructive than that of the German V1s and V2s. To defend against such a threat, they that estimated a massive force of 230 squadrons of fighters and 300 squadrons of bombers would be necessary.

A few days later, the 'Unthinkable' file was closed. A cable had arrived from President Truman which made it clear there was not the slightest possibility that the Americans would lead an attempt to drive the Russians from Poland by force, or even threaten Moscow that they might do so.

The U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Japanese town Nagasaki, on August 9, 1945 - the month before Churchill got inside knowledge at Potsdam that they had completed a successful test of the bomb emboldening him to bring Stalin to heel

Ultimately, Churchill knew in his heart that the tyranny established by the Red Army could not be undone either through diplomacy or by force of arms. But he never doubted the malevolence of Soviet intentions in Eastern Europe, and indeed around the world, and in that regard he was ahead of his time.

In the years after the war, it became progressively apparent that the Western Allies would have to adopt the strongest possible defensive measures against further Soviet aggression in Europe.

In August 1946, the U.S. chiefs of staff became sufficiently fearful of conflict with the Russians to initiate military planning for such a contingency. In London, the 'Unthinkable' file was taken out and dusted down.

Though at no time was it ever deemed politically acceptable or militarily practicable to attempt to free Eastern Europe by force of arms, military preparations for a conflict with the Soviet Union became a staple of the Cold War.

Churchill had proved that, in this new war, as with the one that had just finished, he had unique foresight.

But in one crucial area he lacked any foresight at all. The old warhorse had given little thought to how he and his country would deal with peace.

As we will see tomorrow, he was in for a rude awakening.

• Extracted from Finest Years: Churchill As Warlord published by Harper Press on September 3, 2009.

The technological line to the V-2 Part II

2009-07-06T19:17:00.000+08:00

By Paul Rincon

BBC News Online science staff

R-7: Soviet and US technology was driven on by the Cold War

In the second of two features, BBC News Online looks at the legacy of the V-2 rocket - how the Americans and the Soviets raced to exploit the German technology and expertise they had captured at the end of WW II.
The US succeeded in getting an elite group of engineers led by Wernher von Braun, the technical director at the V-2's Peenemuende facility.

Other engineers and V-2 workers went with the Soviets - not all willingly.

The Russians had reactivated the Mittelwerk production plant after the war with the help of low-ranking former staff and set about reconstructing V-2s for testing.

"I understand there was a successful rocket firing in Lehesten [nearby V-2 test site]. They had a big party and everyone was drunk with Vodka," says Konrad Dannenberg, a propulsion specialist who worked on the V-2, but who put his lot in with the Americans.

"That night the Russians came and said you will be ready to go to Russia in the next three hours."

The Russians rounded up thousands of Germans at gunpoint and put them on a train bound for Moscow. They were housed on an island several km outside Moscow and pumped for their knowledge before finally being sent back home.

By then, the Soviet programme was safe in the hands of Sergei Korolev, the chief designer of Russian rockets.

Missile development

Korolev was a fascinating character, whose life had parallels to that of von Braun.

He too had experimented as an amateur with liquid-fuel rocketry before WW II. But his imprisonment in one of Josef Stalin's dreaded "gulag" labour camps had interrupted his ambitions in rocket-building.

After his release, however, Korolev was placed in charge of masterminding Russia's space and missile programme, although his identity remained a secret from the west for many years.

Von Braun saw that Kennedy's vision was implemented

Perhaps because of the priority placed by their leadership on the development of an ICBM, the Soviets were able to establish an early lead on the US in the successful exploitation of V-2 technology.

Korolev quickly produced a Soviet clone of the V-2, named the R-1. It was the first in a series of Russian rockets that successfully exploited and improved upon the technology pioneered with the V-2 producing, in 1957, the world's first ICBM: the R-7.

"After the war, the work carried out by the Americans and Russians was focussed on making the rockets larger and more powerful. But the major advances had been made with the V-2," says Guido de Maessener, author of the book Peenemuende.

The R-7 was a two-stage rocket with a first stage consisting of 4 boosters. A system of radio control carried out in-flight trajectory corrections and provided for an increase in the accuracy of delivery.

German charm

The US monitored the Soviet ICBM tests, but it was the launch of the first artificial satellite into space that brought fears of Soviet technological superiority to the fore.

On 4 October 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik I, a satellite the size of a basketball, into space aboard an R-7. Sputnik I weighed 183lbs and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path.

For many Americans, the Soviets' ability to launch satellites also translated into the capability to launch ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads at the US.

America's first attempt to launch a satellite - the US Navy-led Project Vanguard - was an embarrassing failure. But in late 1957, Wernher von Braun's team at Huntsville was given the go ahead for its own satellite proposal.

Von Braun's charisma proved even more of an asset in the US than it had been in Germany, especially as the age of television came into its own. He became a national celebrity at the forefront of selling space travel to the American public.

"Von Braun had a gift of inspiring people," recalls Werner Dahm, 87, an aerodynamics engineer in von Braun's rocket team who still works for Nasa.

"The success of the rocket group was in teamwork and good management."

At 11.55pm on 31 January, 1958, Explorer I - America's first artificial satellite - blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida aboard the rocket Juno I.

The space race was underway, and it was clear in America that space travel had to be offloaded from the military to a new organisation.

Several routes

In 1958, Von Braun and his German rocket engineers became employees of the newly established National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).

Throughout the 1950s, the US had lagged behind the achievements of the USSR in space exploration. But at the turn of the decade, America set itself a new, ambitious goal aimed at asserting superiority over the Soviet Union in the space race.

Saturn-5: An immense vehicle with the power to take man to the Moon

On 12 April 1961, President John F Kennedy said in his address to congress: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth."

The speech sparked a furious debate within Nasa over how best to reach Earth's satellite. Space agency engineers identified three principal ways to travel there: the direct, Earth-orbital and lunar-orbital modes.

The direct mode involved simply placing the astronauts aboard a rocket and launching them to the surface of the Moon. The Earth-orbital mode envisioned launching liquid oxygen propellant and astronauts into space separately.

But some Nasa engineers favoured a method known as the lunar orbital method - first proposed by German rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth.

After lengthy deliberation it was decided that the lunar orbital method would be most economical. But a large and powerful rocket was needed to carry the payload. Enter the Saturn 5.

Moon rocket

The Saturns were a series of rockets that incorporated the idea of clustering several rocket engines together to provide powerful thrust.

The Saturn-1Bs successfully carried piloted capsules into space from Apollo 7 onwards. But for Apollo 11, the first mission to land on the Moon, it was necessary to build the largest operational rocket ever.

The Saturn-5 stood 111m high and comprised three stages. The first stage included the five F-1 engines that produced nearly 7.7 million lbs of thrust to lift the heavy rocket fast enough to escape Earth's gravity.

The second stage contained five J-2 engines that produced 1.15 million pounds of thrust that took the vehicle and payload to 185km in altitude.

The third stage contained one J-2 engine producing 230,000lbs of thrust. This propelled the spacecraft to orbital velocity and remained attached to the capsule in Earth orbit.

The engine was then reignited to propel the spacecraft into its lunar trajectory before finally being discarded.

On 20 July 1969, after blasting off aboard a Saturn 5 rocket, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the surface of another Solar System body. The achievement is impossible to overstate.

Technology lineage

But in 1984 an ugly chapter in the story of the V-2 came back to haunt the American space programme. Arthur Rudolph, the programme manager for the Saturn V was forced to leave the US after details emerged of his association with concentration camp labour during the war.

Rudolph had been a manager at the Mittelwerk factory, which used forced labour from Dora concentration camp.

After Rudolph, the floodgates of scrutiny swung open. Investigators began to pay particular attention to the wartime record of von Braun, who died in 1977 and was regarded as a hero for taking America to the Moon.

The extent of von Braun's involvement with camp labour in the construction of the V-2, has now become a bone of contention for WW II historians.

The history of von Braun and his rocket team is sure to continue being written and re-written for many more years.

But the technology ushered in by the V-2 has had a most profound influence on the world we live in today.

Our enlightened view of the Universe, the everyday enhancements in our lifestyle enabled by satellite communications, as well as the phenomenon of push-button warfare - they all trace a line to Peenemuende.

The technological line to the V-2 Part I

2009-07-06T19:15:00.001+08:00

By Paul Rincon

BBC News Online science staff

Post-war rocketry traces a line to Peenemuende

In the first of two features, BBC News Online looks at the legacy of the V-2 rocket - how the Americans and the Soviets raced to exploit the German technology and expertise they had captured at the end of WW II.

In the early 1930s, rockets were considered successful if they travelled several metres from their launch site.

But Germany's thirst for re-armament after World War I spurred an ambitious programme of rocket development that would produce a ballistic missile (the world's first) with a range of 320km (200 miles): the V-2.

"Launching a rocket is much more difficult than, say, taking off in an aeroplane," says Konrad Dannenberg, 92, a propulsion specialist who worked on the V-2, originally designated the A-4.

"With a rocket, especially a space rocket, you need to launch vertically. And in order to do that, your thrust has to be larger than the total weight of your vehicle.

That night the Russians came and said you will be ready to go to Russia in the next three hours

Konrad Dannenberg

"Unfortunately, rockets are at least twice as heavy as aeroplanes because you need to carry an oxidiser on a rocket as well as your fuel. So in my opinion, it was a very major breakthrough."

After the war, Dannenberg was one of about 118 engineers from the V-2 experimental centre at Peenemuende initially selected to travel to the US to work on an American rocket programme.

Dividing up the talent

The Americans, the Soviets, the British and the French, had all raced to first understand and then exploit the V-2's technology following the collapse of Germany.

One way the countries did this was by grabbing as many V-2 parts as they could find, before taking them away to be put back together and fired.

Another way was persuading former engineers from Peenemuende - the experimental centre where the V-2s were built - to come on board their nascent rocket programmes.

In this latter regard, the Americans fared best, bringing Peenemuende's technical director Wernher von Braun and his top engineers to the US in an operation called Project Paperclip.

In America, the Peenemuenders would eventually develop the rockets that carried astronauts Alan Shepard and John Glenn into space and the Apollo capsules to the Moon.

It's all too typical of the way the history of this subject is treated that the military side of this is almost forgotten

Michael Neufeld

"The A-4 was, of course, a one-stage system. All the old rocket pioneers had shown theoretically that in order to go into Earth orbit you really need at least two stages," says Dannenberg.

"But the biggest step for a rocket is to take off from the Earth's surface - that's where you need most of your propellant. So in a way, the A-4 was the very first step to get into space because you need a very powerful first stage."

Towards Armageddon

However, the legacy of the V-2 is an ambiguous one, since the rocket also provided the template for the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

"The international missile race that started after World War II was one of the two important things that came out of the V-2," says Michael Neufeld, a historian and author of The Rocket and The Reich, a book about the German rocket programme.

Von Braun and his elite group of engineers wanted to go with the Americans

"But it's all too typical of the way the history of this subject is treated that the military side of this is almost forgotten.

"The V-2 had little to do with space, it was built as a weapon and its most important side effect after WW II was to be one of the two legs of a revolution in warfare: one side being ballistic missiles and the other side being nuclear weapons.

"The combination of the two became the most frightening weapon of the nuclear age."

When von Braun and his rocket team first arrived in America, they were put to work on the re-assembly, checkout and launching of V-2s from hundreds of parts brought back by the US Army.

These were launched from the White Sands test range in New Mexico.

To Moscow at gunpoint

In 1950, they moved from their accommodation at Fort Bliss, Texas, to the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.

Here, they would develop a rocket that would bridge the gap between the military's missile programme and America's ambitions in space. It was called, simply, the Redstone.

The Redstone: A direct descendant of the V-2

The Redstone was a high-accuracy, liquid-propelled, surface-to-surface missile and a direct descendant of the V-2. Like its German predecessor, the 21m-long (69ft) rocket's engine burned alcohol and liquid oxygen and produced about 75,000lbs of thrust.

Its guidance system used a gyroscopically stabilised platform, computers, a programmed flight path taped into the rocket before launch, and activation of the steering mechanism by signals in flight.

It was also one of the first American weapons to combine guided missile technology with the atomic bomb.

German engineers also formed the bedrock of the Soviet missile and space programmes.

The Redstone work would lead to the first Americans in space

The Russians reactivated the Mittelwerk production plant with the help of low-ranking former staff and set about reconstructing V-2s for testing.

"I understand there was a successful rocket firing in Lehesten [nearby V-2 test site]. They had a big party and everyone was drunk with vodka.

"That night the Russians came and said you will be ready to go to Russia in the next three hours," says Dannenberg.

The Russians rounded up thousands of Germans at gunpoint and put them on a train bound for Moscow.

Der Adler Tag - Dieselpunk

German Secret Weapons: Blueprint for Mars by Brian Ford

A Room 101 Interview with Keith Chester: Author of Strange Company - Military Encounters with UFOs in WWII

READ MORE

The Battle Of Los Angeles is making Hollywood History

A Hollywood Blockbuster, A Hollywood B flick and the Real Documentary

Iron Sky Teaser 3 – We Come in Peace!

Panzer 88: Writer/Director Peter Briggs

Nazi Skull

Book Review: The World Hitler Never Made

Indiana Jones' Adult years 1921 - 1990s

The OMEGA File HITLER ESCAPED!

FOURTH REICH

Rudolf HESS, (1894–1987)

Polar Hitler

Nazi Bi-Polar

Long Live the Frozen Fourth Reich!

The Gatehouse

Space Nazi Flick Iron Sky Goose-Steps Into Production

Fourth Reich Group Portrait

Advanced Horten Prototype

Mauser Earth

Sternkrieg: 1949

Operation Pastorius

Vergeltungswaffen - Game

Introduction

The Neu Victorious Reich...

Mutungsgerät - Strahlenkanone

Iron Sky Film

Himmler's efforts to turn sand into gold

Ludwikowice - "The Henge"

Fan-funded Nazi UFO movie has raised $7.65 million

What if Hitler had invaded Eire?

Nazi flying discs: The alternative Roswell

The Hitler Diaries: The Big "Discovery"

The Hitler Diaries: History Rewritten

Oil and Triumph of Nazi Germany

Book: Rising Sun Victorious: An Alternate History of the Pacific War

Product Description

About the Author

Book: Third Reich Victorious: Alternate Decisions of World War II

Product Description

About the Author

Book: The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism

Review

Product Description

R. W. Rasband

Jurassic Reich

The Anubis Gates- the real story of Jurassic Reich

1800 Twelve months after unearthing the Rosetta Stone, Napoleon’s troops in Egypt uncover a large, ancient Egyptian artifact. It is taken to Paris for exhibition, but ends up in storage.

Nazi Super Trains

Nazi Diesielpunk (1941)

Black Sun: The Mythological Background of National Socialism.

Kieth Thompson -- Concept Art -- Iron Grip

The Superpowers Expand

V 3 - THE HIGH-PRESSURE PUMP GUN - Redux

Der Ratte

Secrets of the Third Reich

Secrets of the Third Reich, Rulebook

French SoTR Forum

WWII Short Film

Writer/Director Ryan Nagata recently posted a self-funded short film set in an alternate 1945.

INCURSION

The RAF’s Plan to Kidnap Hitler

Lost Nazi nuke-project uranium found in Dutch scrapyard

Families of Altered Wars - Comics

Heinkel He P1073.02

The Gatehouse.

Welcome

Dieselpunk

Crickey, Secret Nazi stuff

What if Hitler had survived? (And how he could have escaped the bunker)

Aerial Images by Daring Allies Revealing Hitler's Weapons

Wunderflugzeug III

Wunderflugzeug II

Wunderflugzeug I

Albert Speer: Size Matters - Visions of Space

Missiles for the Fatherland: Peenemünde, National Socialism, and the V-2 Missile.

Operation unthinkable: How Churchill wanted to recruit defeated Nazi troops and drive Russia out of Eastern Europe

The technological line to the V-2 Part II