by Jim Marrs
Schriever later said the Allied advance into Germany put an end to his “flying disc” experiments, with all equipment and designs lost or destroyed. However, a Georg Klein told the postwar German press that he had witnessed the Schriever disc, or something like it, test-flown in February 1945.
Schriever reportedly died in the late 1950s and, according to a 1975 issue of Luftfahrt International, notes and sketches related to a large flying saucer were found in his effects. The periodical also stated that Schriever maintained until his death that his original saucer concept must have been made operational prior to war’s end. This possibility is acknowledged by British author Brian Ford, who wrote, “There are supposed to have been ‘flying saucers’ too, which were near the final stages of development, and indeed it may be that some progress was made toward the construction of small, disc-like aircraft, but the results were destroyed, apparently before they fell into enemy hands.”
These accounts would seem to be corroborated by a CIA report dated May 27, 1954. As reported in Nick Redfern’s 1998 book, The FBI Files: The FBI’s UFO Top Secrets Exposed, the document stated, “A German newspaper (not further identified) recently published an interview with Georg Klein, famous German engineer and aircraft expert, describing the experimental construction of ‘flying saucers’ carried out by him from 1941 to 1945. Klein stated he was present when, in 1945, the first piloted ‘flying saucer’ took off and reached a speed of 1,300 miles per hour within three minutes. The experiments resulted in three designs—one designed by Miethe was a disk-shaped aircraft, 135 feet in diameter, which did not rotate; another, designed by Habermohl and Schriever, consisted of a large rotating ring, in the center of which was a round, stationary cabin for the crew. When the Soviets occupied Prague, the Germans destroyed every trace of the ‘flying saucer’ project and nothing more was heard of Habermohl and his assistants. Schriever recently died in Bremen, where he had been living. In Breslau, the Soviets managed to capture one of the saucers built by Miethe, who escaped to France. He is reportedly in the USA at present.”
Another candidate for inventor of a German UFO is the Austrian scientist Victor Schauberger, who, after being kidnapped by the Nazis, reportedly designed a number of “flying discs” in 1940, using a flameless and smokeless form of electromagnetic propulsion called “diamagnetism.” Schauberger reportedly worked for the U.S. government for a short time after the war before dying of natural causes. Prior to his death, he was quoted as saying, “They took everything from me. Everything.” No one knows for certain if he meant the Nazis or the Allies.
That someone was flying highly unconventional disc-shaped objects shortly after World War II was made plain by the now-public comments of U.S. Army Lieutenant General Nathan Twining, then in charge of the Army Air Forces’ Air Material Command (AMC).
In mid-1947, two years after the war ended, “flying saucers” were being reported both in Europe and America. General Twining wrote that the “phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” He went on to describe attributes of such discs as having “extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend[ing] belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely.”
Allowing a small glimpse into the reality of such radical technology, Twining concluded, “It is possible within the present U.S. knowledge—provided extensive detailed development is undertaken—to construct a piloted aircraft which has the general description of the object [described above] which would be capable of an approximate range of 7,000 miles at subsonic speeds.”
If technical knowledge in the 1940s was advanced enough to construct a workable flying saucer, the public was never to hear about it. Beginning in the late 1940s, a national security “lid” was placed on the subject.
But it is fascinating to recall that one of the first and best documented cases of mysterious abductions took place in September 1961, when Betty and Barney Hill under hypnosis recalled being taken aboard a circular craft manned by men in black uniforms. Barney Hill described the leader as a “German Nazi” wearing a shiny black jacket, scarf, and cap.
Before anyone rushes out to proclaim that all UFOs are really secret Nazi technology, serious attention should be given to the wealth of public literature that clearly indicates that while some saucers, especially in the years following World War II, may indeed have been Nazi test vehicles, any objective review of the material suggests the presence of some unconventional source as well.
Another amazing—and chilling—aspect of Nazi technology involved their development of nuclear weapons. Researcher and author Farrell concluded from new material released from the former East Germany that the Nazis were much closer to developing an atomic bomb than previously accepted by postwar writers. He characterized the idea that the Germans had neither the talent nor the capability to construct an operational atomic bomb—recall the well-known story of the destruction of the heavy-water plant in Norway by commandos—an “Allied Legend” designed to distract the public from a horrible reality. “[A]ll the evidence points to the conclusion that there was a large, very well-funded, and very secret German isotope-enrichment program during the war, a program successfully disguised during the war by the Nazis and covered up after the war by the Allied Legend,” wrote Farrell, after concluding that the conventional story that “the German failure to obtain the atom bomb because they never had a functioning reactor is simply utter scientific nonsense because a reactor is needed only if one wants to produce plutonium. It is an unneeded, and expensive, development, if one only wants to make a uranium A-bomb [emphasis in the original].”
Plus, there is the cryptic remark made by Kurt Diebner, a physicist involved with the Nazi atomic bomb project. Surreptitiously recorded by British intelligence during postwar internment at Farm Hall, England, Diebner mentioned a “photochemical process” to enrich uranium bypassing the need for a centrifuge. Since no modern researcher understands what process was referred to by Diebner, this may mean that the Nazis discovered a method of isotope separation and uranium enrichment that even now remains classified.
Adding to the idea that the Nazis already had perfected a method of enriching uranium are the words of nuclear scientist Karl Wirtz, who was also secretly taped at Farm Hall. Upon learning of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Otto Hahn, who discovered atomic fission, commented, “They can only have done that if they have uranium isotope separation.” To which Wirtz agreed by responding, “They have it too,” a clear indication that he knew of a German separation process. Farrell noted, “Thus, there is sufficient reason, due to the science of bomb-making and the political and military realities of the war after America’s entry, that the Germans took the decision to develop only a uranium bomb, since that afforded the best, most direct, and technologically least complicated route to acquisition of a bomb.”
Based on his research, Farrell wrote, “American progress in the plutonium bomb, from the moment [physicist Enrico] Fermi successfully completed and tested a functioning reactor in the squash court at the University of Chicago, appeared to be running fairly smoothly, until fairly late in the war, when it was discovered that in order to make a bomb from plutonium, the critical mass would have to be assembled much faster than any existing Allied fuse technologies could accomplish. Moreover, there was so little margin of error, since the fuses in an implosion device would have to fire as close to simultaneously as possible, that Allied engineers began to despair of making a plutonium bomb work…. I believe a strong prima facie case has been outlined that Nazi Germany developed and successfully tested, and perhaps used, a uranium atom bomb before the end of World War II,” Farrell concluded.
Farrell was not alone in this assessment. In 2005, Berlin historian Rainer Karlsch, in a book titled Hitlers Bombe, claimed that the Nazis indeed tested nuclear weapons on Rugen Island near Ohrdruf, Thuring
ia, site of a subsidiary concentration camp to the infamous Buchenwald. Reportedly, many prisoners were killed during these tests, which were conducted under the supervision of the SS. Karlsch’s primary evidence consists of “vouchers” for “tests” and a patent for a plutonium weapon dated 1941. He also claimed to have found traces of radioactivity in soil from the site. However, in February 2006, the German government reported no abnormal radiation levels at the site, even after taking into account elevated levels due to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Russia.
Although Nazi armaments minister Speer was questioned about a mysterious blast at Ohrdruf during the Nuremberg war crimes trials, no significant information on a nuclear test was found, either because it never happened or because a postwar cover-up was quite successful.
Mainstream historians, at the mercy of carefully concocted cover stories in both Germany and the USA, have remained skeptical that Nazi scientists could have advanced their nuclear knowledge to the point of actual testing. However, evidence that the Nazis were planning a nuclear strike near the end of the war came from varied sources, including a news article in the Washington Post dated June 29, 1945, which reported on an amazing find by Allied troops in Norway:
R.A.F. [Royal Air Force] officers said today that the Germans had nearly completed preparations for bombing New York from a “colossal air field” near Oslo when the war ended.
Forty giant bombers with a 7,000-mile range were found on this base—“the largest Luftwaffe field I have ever seen,” one officer said.
They were a new type bomber developed by Heinkel. They now are being dismantled for study. German ground crews said the planes were held in readiness for a mission to New York.
It should also be noted that the Nazis had two prototypes of the Junkers-390, a massive six-engine modification of the Junkers-290, known to have made flights to Japanese bases in Manchuria.
In late 1944, one JU-390 was flown from a base in Bordeaux, France, to within twelve miles of New York City, snapped photographs of the skyline, and returned—a nonstop flight of thirty-two hours.
What weapon was to be transported by these massive bombers? After the war, authorities discovered a feasibility study by the German Luftwaffe detailing the blast effects of an atomic bomb over New York’s Manhattan Island. The Nazi study was based on an atomic bomb in the fifteen-to seventeen-kiloton range, approximately the same yield as the Little Boy uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
If Nazi Germany had a nuclear weapon, they surely must have tested it, and a collection of disparate sources seems to indicate this was accomplished. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, in a “Political Testament” written shortly before his death at the hands of partisans in April 1945, stated, “The wonder weapons are the hope. It is laughable and senseless for us to threaten at this moment, without a basis in reality for these threats. The well-known mass destruction bombs are nearly ready. In only a few days, with the utmost meticulous intelligence, Hitler will probably execute this fearful blow, because he will have full confidence…. It appears there are three bombs—and each has an astonishing operation. The construction of each is fearfully complex and of a lengthy time of completion.”
Mussolini’s mention of three bombs is intriguing because of a statement of a former Russian military translator who served on the staff of Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, the officer who took Japan’s surrender to the Soviet Union in 1945. As reported by the German magazine Der Spiegel in 1992, Piotr Titarenko had written a letter to the Communist Party Central Committee, in which he stated that the three atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. One of these, dropped on Nagasaki prior to the blast of August 9, 1945, failed to detonate and subsequently was given to the Soviet Union by Japanese officials. If Titarenko’s account is accurate, this would mean that America had three atomic bombs on hand in the summer of 1945. Yet, a report to Manhattan Project leader Robert Oppenheimer just days after President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, stated that not enough enriched uranium existed to create a viable critical mass for even one atomic bomb.
News stories in Britain point to a possible Nazi atomic bomb test in 1944. An August 11, 1945, article in London’s Daily Telegraph reported, “Britain prepared for the possibility of an atomic bomb attack on this country by Germany in August 1944. It can now be disclosed that details of the expected effect of such a bomb were revealed in a highly secret memorandum which was sent that summer to the chiefs of Scotland Yard, chief constables of provincial forces and senior officials of the defense services.” Another odd story also was published in England’s Daily Mail on October 14, 1944, under the headline “Berlin Is ‘Silent’ 60 Hours, Still No Phones.” The story, filed by a correspondent from Stockholm, stated that all telephone service in Berlin had been interrupted for three days with “no explanation for the hold-up, which has lasted longer than on any previous occasion.” The story ended by saying, “It is pointed out, moreover, in responsible quarters that if the stoppage were purely the technical result of bomb damage, as the Germans claimed, it should have been repaired by now.” A modern readership would know that such disruption can be caused by the electromagnetic pulse associated with a nuclear detonation.
Other intriguing hints of a German atomic test came in the form of three separate intelligence reports. A once-classified U.S. military intelligence report dated August 19, 1945, and titled “Investigations, Research, Developments and Practical Use of the German Atomic Bomb” details the experience of a German pilot named Hans Zinsser, a Flak rocket expert, while piloting a Heinkel bomber over northern Germany. Note that his experience coincides with the dates of the Berlin telephone blackout. Zinsser reported:
At the beginning of October 1944, I flew from Ludwigslust (south of Luebeck) about 12 to 15 km from an atomic bomb test station, when I noticed a strong, bright illumination of the whole atmosphere, lasting about 2 seconds.
The clearly visible pressure wave escaped the approaching and following cloud formed by the explosion. This wave had a diameter of about 1 km when it became visible and the color of the cloud changed frequently…. Personal observations of the colors of the explosion cloud found an almost blue-violet shade. During this manifestation reddish-colored rims were to be seen, changing to a dirty-like shade in very rapid succession. The combustion was lightly felt from my observation plane in the form of pulling and pushing…. About an hour later…I passed through the almost complete overcast (between 3,000 and 4,000 meter altitude). A cloud shaped like a mushroom with turbulent billowing sections (at about 7,000 meter altitude) stood, without any seeming connections, over the spot where the explosion took place. Strong electrical disturbances and the impossibility to continue radio communications turned up. Because of the P-38s operating in the area Wittenberg-Mersburg I had to turn to the north but observed a better visibility at the bottom of the cloud where the explosion occured [sic]. Note: It does not seem very clear to me why these experiments took place in such crowded areas.
Then there was the report of an Italian officer, Luigi Romersa, who claimed to have been present at the testing of a “disintegration bomb” on the night of October 11–12, 1944. Romersa was granted a special pass from Oberkommando Der Wehrmacht, or German High Command, to visit the test site on the island of Rugen. Romersa was a special envoy from Mussolini, who had wanted more information since Hitler had mentioned to him “a bomb with a force which will surprise the whole world.”
According to Romersa, he and others were told the “disintegration bomb” was “the most powerful explosive that has yet been developed” and that “nothing can withstand it.” They were sent to a bunker about a mile from the actual test site. He also was warned against radioactivity. “Around 4 P.M., in the twilight, shadows appeared, running toward our bunker,” recalled Romersa. “They were soldiers and they had on a strange type of ‘diving suit.’ They entered and quickly shut the door. ‘Everything is kaput,’ one of them said as he removed his protective clothing. We also eventually had to put on white, coarse, fibrous cloa
ks. I cannot say what the material was made of, but I had the impression that it could have been asbestos. The headgear has a piece of Glimmerglas [mica glass?] in front of the eyes.”
After making their way to the test site proper, Romersa stated, “The houses that I had seen only an hour earlier had disappeared, broken into little pebbles of debris. As we drew nearer [to the point of explosion], the more fearsome was the devastation. The grass had the same color as leather. The few trees that still stood upright had no more leaves.”
Romersa’s credibility is supported by the fact that he eventually came to the United States, where he was granted a high-security clearance.
A third report dated December 14, 1944, but only declassified by the National Security Agency in 1978, is titled “Reports on the Atom-splitting Bomb.” This purports to be a decoded intercept of a message from the Japanese embassy in Stockholm to headquarters in Tokyo. It reads:
This bomb is revolutionary in its results, and will completely upset all ordinary precepts of warfare hitherto established. I am sending you, in one group, all those reports on what is called the atom-splitting bomb. It is a fact that in June of 1943, the German Army tried out an utterly new type of weapon against the Russians at a location 150 kilometers southeast of Kursk. Although it was the entire 19th Infantry Regiment of the Russians which was thus attacked, only a few bombs (each round up to 5 kilograms) sufficed to utterly wipe them out to the last man.