Posted On: July 31, 2022

In ufology, conspiracy theory, science fiction, and comic book stories, claims or stories have circulated linking UFOs to Nazi Germany. The German UFO theories describe supposedly successful attempts to develop advanced aircraft or spacecraft prior to and during World War II, further asserting the post-war survival of these craft in secret underground bases in Antarctica, South America, or the United States, along with their creators. According to these theories and stories, various potential code-names or sub-classifications of Nazi UFO craft such as Gloke, V7, and Vril, have all been referenced. And those are just the ones I could pronounce.

In World War II, the so-called "foo fighters", a variety of unusual and anomalous aerial phenomena, were witnessed by both Axis and Allied personnel. While some foo fighter reports were dismissed as the misperceptions of troops in the heat of combat, others were taken seriously, and leading scientists such as Luis Alvarez began to investigate them in at least some cases. Allied intelligence and commanders suspected that foo fighters reported in the European theater represented advanced German aircraft or weapons, particularly given that Germans had already developed such technological innovations as V-1 and V-2 rockets and the first operational jet-powered Me 262 fighter planes. A minority of foo fighters seemed to have inflicted damage to allied aircraft.

Similar sentiments regarding German technology resurfaced in 1947 with the first wave of flying saucer reports after Kenneth Arnold's widely reported close encounter with nine crescent-shaped objects moving at a high velocity. Personnel of Project Sign, the first U.S. Air Force UFO investigation group, noted that the advanced flying wing aeronautical designs of the German Horten brothers were similar to some UFO reports. In 1959, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of Project Blue Book (Project Sign's follow-up investigation) wrote:

When WWII ended, the Germans had several radical types of aircraft and guided missiles under development. The majority were in the most preliminary stages, but they were the only known craft that could even approach the performance of objects reported by UFO observers.

While these early speculations and reports were limited primarily to military personnel, the earliest assertion of German flying saucers in the mass media appears to have been an article that appeared in an Italian newspaper in 1950. Written by Professor Giuseppe Belluzzo, an Italian scientist and a former Italian Minister of National Economy under the Mussolini regime, it claimed that "types of flying discs were designed and studied in Germany and Italy as early as 1942". Belluzzo also expressed the opinion that "some great power is launching discs to study them".

The Bell UFO hoax from the year 2000 was among the first flying objects to be connected with the Nazis. It apparently had occult markings on it and was also rumored to have been very similar to a Wehrmacht document about a vertical take-off aircraft. It is directly related to the supposed crash of a bell-shaped object that occurred in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, the USA on December 9, 1965. The same month, German engineer Rudolf Schriever gave an interview to a German news magazine in which he claimed that he had designed a craft powered by a circular plane of rotating turbine blades 49 ft (15 m) in diameter. He said that the project had been developed by him and his team at BMW's Prague works until April 1945, when he fled to Czechoslovakia.

In 1953, when Avro Canada announced that it was developing the VZ-9-AV Avrocar, a circular jet aircraft with an estimated speed of 1,500 mph (2,400 km/h), German engineer Georg Klein claimed that such designs had been developed during the Nazi era. Klein identified two types of supposed German flying disks:

A non-rotating disk developed at Breslau by V-2 rocket engineer Richard Miethe was captured by the Soviets, while Miethe fled to the US via France, and ended up working for Avro. A disk developed by Rudolf Schriever and Klaus Habermohl in Prague consisted of a ring of moving turbine blades around a fixed cockpit. Klein claimed that he had witnessed this craft's first crewed flight on 14 February 1945, when it managed to climb to 12,400 m (40,700 ft) in 3 minutes and attained a speed of 2,200 km/h (1,400 mph) in level flight.

Aeronautical engineer Roy Fedden remarked that the only craft that could approach the capabilities attributed to flying saucers were those being designed by the Germans towards the end of the war. Fedden (who was also chief of the technical mission to Germany for the Ministry of Aircraft Production) stated in 1945:

I have seen enough of their designs and production plans to realize that if the Reich had managed to prolong the war some months longer, we would have been confronted with a set of entirely new and deadly developments in air warfare.

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

Are these stories truly so hard to believe? At the time of its peak, Nazi Germany was one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world, having the best tanks and aircraft throughout the course of WW2. If the United States Government was researching UFOs at the time, the Germans could have easily been following suit. If they had just a few more months back in 1945, who knows what could have happened?

Posted On: July 31, 2022

In ufology, conspiracy theory, science fiction, and comic book stories, claims or stories have circulated linking UFOs to Nazi Germany. The German UFO theories describe supposedly successful attempts to develop advanced aircraft or spacecraft prior to and during World War II, further asserting the post-war survival of these craft in secret underground bases in Antarctica, South America, or the United States, along with their creators. According to these theories and stories, various potential code-names or sub-classifications of Nazi UFO craft such as Gloke, V7, and Vril, have all been referenced. And those are just the ones I could pronounce.

In World War II, the so-called "foo fighters", a variety of unusual and anomalous aerial phenomena, were witnessed by both Axis and Allied personnel. While some foo fighter reports were dismissed as the misperceptions of troops in the heat of combat, others were taken seriously, and leading scientists such as Luis Alvarez began to investigate them in at least some cases. Allied intelligence and commanders suspected that foo fighters reported in the European theater represented advanced German aircraft or weapons, particularly given that Germans had already developed such technological innovations as V-1 and V-2 rockets and the first operational jet-powered Me 262 fighter planes. A minority of foo fighters seemed to have inflicted damage to allied aircraft.

Similar sentiments regarding German technology resurfaced in 1947 with the first wave of flying saucer reports after Kenneth Arnold's widely reported close encounter with nine crescent-shaped objects moving at a high velocity. Personnel of Project Sign, the first U.S. Air Force UFO investigation group, noted that the advanced flying wing aeronautical designs of the German Horten brothers were similar to some UFO reports. In 1959, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of Project Blue Book (Project Sign's follow-up investigation) wrote:

When WWII ended, the Germans had several radical types of aircraft and guided missiles under development. The majority were in the most preliminary stages, but they were the only known craft that could even approach the performance of objects reported by UFO observers.

While these early speculations and reports were limited primarily to military personnel, the earliest assertion of German flying saucers in the mass media appears to have been an article that appeared in an Italian newspaper in 1950. Written by Professor Giuseppe Belluzzo, an Italian scientist and a former Italian Minister of National Economy under the Mussolini regime, it claimed that "types of flying discs were designed and studied in Germany and Italy as early as 1942". Belluzzo also expressed the opinion that "some great power is launching discs to study them".

The Bell UFO hoax from the year 2000 was among the first flying objects to be connected with the Nazis. It apparently had occult markings on it and was also rumored to have been very similar to a Wehrmacht document about a vertical take-off aircraft. It is directly related to the supposed crash of a bell-shaped object that occurred in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, the USA on December 9, 1965. The same month, German engineer Rudolf Schriever gave an interview to a German news magazine in which he claimed that he had designed a craft powered by a circular plane of rotating turbine blades 49 ft (15 m) in diameter. He said that the project had been developed by him and his team at BMW's Prague works until April 1945, when he fled to Czechoslovakia.

In 1953, when Avro Canada announced that it was developing the VZ-9-AV Avrocar, a circular jet aircraft with an estimated speed of 1,500 mph (2,400 km/h), German engineer Georg Klein claimed that such designs had been developed during the Nazi era. Klein identified two types of supposed German flying disks:

A non-rotating disk developed at Breslau by V-2 rocket engineer Richard Miethe was captured by the Soviets, while Miethe fled to the US via France, and ended up working for Avro. A disk developed by Rudolf Schriever and Klaus Habermohl in Prague consisted of a ring of moving turbine blades around a fixed cockpit. Klein claimed that he had witnessed this craft's first crewed flight on 14 February 1945, when it managed to climb to 12,400 m (40,700 ft) in 3 minutes and attained a speed of 2,200 km/h (1,400 mph) in level flight.

Aeronautical engineer Roy Fedden remarked that the only craft that could approach the capabilities attributed to flying saucers were those being designed by the Germans towards the end of the war. Fedden (who was also chief of the technical mission to Germany for the Ministry of Aircraft Production) stated in 1945:

I have seen enough of their designs and production plans to realize that if the Reich had managed to prolong the war some months longer, we would have been confronted with a set of entirely new and deadly developments in air warfare.

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

Are these stories truly so hard to believe? At the time of its peak, Nazi Germany was one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world, having the best tanks and aircraft throughout the course of WW2. If the United States Government was researching UFOs at the time, the Germans could have easily been following suit. If they had just a few more months back in 1945, who knows what could have happened?