Inquiry with Kelly Chase - [The UFO Rabbit Hole] Ep 12: Nazis & UFOs [Pt 2]: The Occult & Secret Technology

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

In part 2 of our 3 part series on the intersection of Nazi and UFO lore during WWII, we’ll be diving into two major themes of this mythology: the occult and secret technology. We’ll be getting into everything in this episode: German occult clubs, Theosophy, secret technology, Die Glocke, foo fighters, the search for the Holy Grail and other relics, and more.And as we begin to untangle this dense and sprawling lore, we’ll see a new narrative being to emerge—one of humanity grappling with the unthinkable.NEW Class from Dr. James MaddenUnidentified Flying Hyperobject: UFOs, Philosophy, and the End of the WorldFour-week online class via ZoomWednesdays, March 27 – April 24 (skips April 10), 20247 – 9 pm ETLearn More About the ClassSign Up NowMENTIONED IN EPISODEUFOs Before Roswell: European Foo-Fighters 1940-1945 by Graeme RendallGET THE EPISODE BRIEFBECOME A PATRONGET THE BOOKGet a SIGNED COPYGet it on AmazonFOLLOWWebsiteTwitterFacebookMUSICTheme: Cabinet of Curiosities by Shaun FrearsonMusic Break 1: My Lord by Yarin PrimackMusic Break 2: Jakub PietrasBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ufo-rabbit-hole-podcast--5746035/support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usaa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. Welcome back to the UFO Rabbit Hole podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Chase. Today, we begin part two in our three-part series on the intersection of Nazi and UFO lore. In part one, we explored the emergence of the modern, concept of the UFO, which traces its roots back to a string of sightings in 1947, including the

infamous alleged flying saucer crash in Roswell, New Mexico. That context is crucial for understanding how Nazi UFO lore evolved. So if you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, I recommend you start there. In this episode, we're going to begin to dive into the complex web of mythology connecting UFOs to Nazi Germany. It's a strange world where the occult, art, ancient religions, and international intrigue and secret technology collide to create a dense and potent lore. It speaks to us in the language of our most primordial myths, and yet there's an undeniable modernity to it. The specificity of names, places, and events intertwined with these fantastical stories lends them an uncanny immediacy that one doesn't often find in legends and scriptures.

Through the refraction of Nazi UFO lore, we can see the shadows of humanity grappling with the incomprehensible. The horrors of modern warfare, the more than six million lives lost to an unspeakable Holocaust, and 200,000 more vaporized into nothingness just three weeks after the first successful test of a nuclear bomb. The collective trauma of these events lives in us. These events didn't just change the world. In many ways, they created a new one as the world that existed before became irretrievable. As a species, we've always used myths and symbols to communicate and collectively process the things for which we don't have words. And so it's not surprising that a Baroque mythology has sprung up around the events of World War II. We have a deep human need

to process these things in a way that is more than just historical. And at the same time that this mythology began to form, a new kind of archetype was emerging in our collective consciousness. that of the UFO. In the form of the flying saucer, ancient symbols of the otherworldly and divine coalesced around a new paradigm, one that was distinctly modern and technological. And as with the gods of old, the UFO became a sort of Rorschach inkblot onto which we projected our cultural hopes and anxieties. We can see this as we track the ways that these stories and our interpretations of them shift and evolve over time, which isn't to say that the UFO phenomenon doesn't represent something real. I personally believe that it does. When you trace all these sprawling and divergent

mythologies to their root, it seems impossible to deny that there's something real there. What else are we to make of decades of declassified documents that seem to show that the government and military has long grappled with the phenomenon, not as an outside possibility, but as a present and potentially dangerous reality. The famous Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, was fascinated with UFOs, largely because of their singular position at the very intersection of the real and the mythical. He had many different opinions on the nature of the UFO phenomenon throughout his life. But near the end, he seemed to settle on the opinion that UFOs were, quote, an archetype with physical attributes.

Now, we could spend all day unpacking what that might mean, and whether we should approach that statement literally or metaphorically, but I don't want to get lost in the weeds. What's most important for today's purposes is just that we read recognize this dichotomy within the lore, that it speaks both to something real and to something mythical. We need that understanding to begin to unpack and deconstruct these stories in the hopes of uncovering the deeper truths that they point to. All right, so let's get to the good part, the UFO lore itself. Our goal in this first pass will be simply to take an overview of the

UFO lore surrounding World War II. Then we can circle back and begin to deconstruct it to see what it all might mean. But for now, you can take off your critical thinking hat and just marinate in the weirdness. And we'll start with a connection between Nazi Germany and the occult. In many ways, the roots of the philosophy that would come to underpin the Nazi party, as well as the origin point for many of the most fantastical elements of UFO lore surrounding the events of World War II can be found in the same place. In the writings of a notorious 19th century author and spiritualist, Madame Helena Blancel. Levotsky. Helena Blavatsky was born in what is now Ukraine in 1831. Born into an aristocratic family,

Blavatsky was highly unusual among women of her time. Quick-witted and stunningly well-read, the largely self-educated Blavatsky traveled widely as a child. During her teenage years, her self-driven curiosity and scholarship led her to develop an interest in Western esotericism. At the age of 17, she agreed to marry a vice governor of a province in the Russian empire. who was nearly 30 years her senior. It's not totally clear why she agreed to marry him, although she was reported to have later said that she was attracted to his belief in magic. However, whatever enthusiasm she may have had regarding the union quickly dissipated. After trying unsuccessfully to stop the marriage, she moved with him to Sardar Palace,

where she then made repeated attempts to run away. Her husband and family finally relented, and plans were made to allow her to travel back to her family with two servants as escorts. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Blavatsky seized the opportunity to escape from her chaperones and bribed the captain of a ship, eventually arriving in Constantinople. From there, she began what came to be decades of globe-trotting, traveling to Greece, Egypt, India, America, Canada, and most shockingly to Tibet, a country that was strictly closed off to foreigners. Throughout these travels, she claimed to have met and studied under several different esoteric masters. These masters revealed to her ancient occult secrets and histories that were the basis of a lost religion from a more spiritually and technologically advanced chapter in humanity's distant past. She also claimed to be a powerful medium, and tales of her astounding paranormal abilities

made her a prominent figure in the growing spiritualist movement. Madame Levotsky wrote two books, ISIS unveiled in 1871, and the secret doctrine in 1888. These books formed the foundation of a new book. belief system, which she called Theosophy. Central to Theosophy is a belief in the existence of a shadowy group of spiritual adepts, known as the masters, who are essentially the guardians of secret ancient wisdom. Based primarily in underground strongholds in Tibet, these masters comprised a fraternity of highly evolved men who had attained advanced levels of moral and intellectual development. Due to their enlightened nature, these masters were said to have gained supernatural powers

through clairvoyance, astral projection, telepathy, and more. Through their mastery of secret knowledge, they also achieved extra long lifespans, allowing them to live for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Madame Blavatsky claimed that both of her books were more or less dictated to her telepathically by the masters, and that what they revealed within them was no less than the one true universal religion.

As evidence of the mystical origins of these texts, some of Blavatsky's followers and associates claimed that she had no access to many of the books that she directly quoted in her writing, implying that she had received them word for word through paranormal means. We could spend all day talking through the various sprawling entangled beliefs outlined in Blavatsky's work, but we won't. I will include a bunch of resources in the episode brief if you'd like to explore that further. However, for the purposes of this conversation, there is one belief in particular that is of special importance, and that is the idea of root races and subraces.

In her writing, Madame Lavatsky claimed that humanity can be divided into various root races, which can be further divided into subraces. Drawing from a variety of ancient traditions and esoteric histories, Levotsky presented the following history of humanity in its various root races on this planet. The first root race on the planet was the Polarians. They were not physical beings as we imagine them, but existed an inferial state of pure spirit and reproduced by dividing themselves like amoevas. The second root race was the Hyperboreans, who were the first physical manifestation of humans.

They lived in a land called Hyperborea in what is now Northern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia, and Northern Asia. The third root race was the Lemurians. Lemuria was supposedly an ancient, mostly sunk in landmass in the Indian Ocean, the remains of which are modern-day Australia. Due to the prevailing belief that the Earth was 200 million years old, Blavatsky claimed that the Lemurians lived alongside dinosaurs. They also reproduced by laying eggs. And I don't even know what to say about that. Lemuria was wild. The fourth root race was the Atlanteans, as in the literal inhabitants of Atlantis. The Atlantians represent the golden age of human civilization and evolution. These people didn't just have psychic abilities, but advanced technology, including flying machines. However, as is common

in Atlantean mythology, the people of Atlantis became materialistic and warlike, with some of them even turning to black magic. All of this led to the eventual sinking of Atlantis, from which only a few of the white magic magic magicians managed to escape after having been warned of the coming cataclysm by the masters. These magicians then became the founders of the fifth root race, the Aryans. And I'm sure you can see where this is going. Aryans were thought to be the literal and spiritual descendants of the Golden Age of Men. As such, they were more spiritually pure, civilized, and intellectually advanced race than other sub-races, which were regarded to be more like animals than like the divine spiritual beings from which they believed themselves to descend.

Blavatsky was not the first to make these claims about the existence of a superior Aryan race descended from the survivors of Atlantis, but she certainly played one of the most significant roles in introducing it to the mainstream, the devastating results of which will be forever etched in our collective psyche. We'll come back to this in a bit. There were other similar ideologies percolating around the same time that both borrowed from and expanded upon the tenets of theosophy that would also prove to be influential in the coming decades. In 1871, Edward Bulwer-Lighton first anonymously published his book called Vrille, the Coming Race.

This novel told a story of a wealthy traveler who, while exploring a natural chasm deep within a mine shaft, discovers a subterranean civilization of highly advanced beings called the Vrilla. These beings are described as angelic, and their city whose architecture mirrors that of ancient Egypt is a technological utopia. The traveler learns that they are the descendants of an ancient people who fled underground thousands of years ago to escape a great flood. Their technology is powered by an all-permeating fluid called Vrille, a latent source of energy that is in everything. Rill is described as an immeasurable force that can be used for healing, for destruction, and for anything in between. The spiritually elevated Vrilla people are able to master and control this energy through training of their will. However, the degree to which they are able to do so depends on their bloodline and heredity.

Although this was published as a fictional account, the narrative was well aligned to the emerging belief system at the center of a growing pagan revivalist movement in Europe. Spurred by the rise of theosophy and other similar spiritualist movements, many of which adopted Vrille as the term for a universal power connecting all things. The lines between fact and fiction and between science and myth were increasingly blurry. This caused many to take this novel as being, if not a direct history, then at least an allegory pointing to a fundamental truth. In the lead up to World War II, this belief in Vrille was alleged to be literal among many high-ranking members of Germany's most influential occult fraternities. One person said to be adept at harnessing this power was a powerful medium named Maria Orsick, a legendary beauty with long blonde hair.

Orsick was the leader of a shadowy occult group called the Brill Society, which was essentially a black lodge of powerful magicians who allegedly played a major role in eventually bringing Hitler to power. Another occultist group that figured prominently in the rise of Nazi Germany was the Thule Society. Fuel was supposedly the name of a mystical homeland from which the Aryan people originated. Located at the northernmost point of the globe,

through an entrance to a subterranean world, fuel was said to be populated by a race of light-skinned, blue-eyed, blonde-haired giants who had once ruled the world. The primary focus of the Fuel Society was an obsession with the origins and protection of the Aryan race. Those who wanted to join the Fuel Society had to sign a special blood declaration of faith concerning their lineage, which stated, The signer hereby swears to the best of his knowledge and belief that no Jewish or colored blood flows in either his, nor his wife's veins, and that among their ancestors are no members of the colored races. Perhaps not surprisingly, membership into this group reads like a who's who of prominent Nazi

leaders and sympathizers, the most notorious of which was Heinrich Himmler, a leading member of the Nazi party and the man considered to be the architect of the Holocaust. It's not hard to see how this potent mix of racism, fervent nationalism, and spiritualist awakening took root in Germany in the years after World War I. For a country that was morally and financially decimated in that defeat, this movement offered a compelling remedy in the form of a renewed national pride and identity, a clear group of others to scapegoat for their problems, and the insinuation of a forgotten power that, if discovered and properly harnessed, could vanquish their enemies once and for all. Although there was a lot of variation in the details, the idea is that

gained traction among the nativist German cults that arose in the aftermath of World War I took on a predictable shape and shared several basic core tenants. First and foremost was the belief in the existence and superiority of a distinct Aryan race that is directly descended from some kind of more highly evolved beings. The second is a belief in a true Aryan homeland. This pagan Garden of Eden is the point of origin for the Aryan race. Its alleged location varies, with the most common being either Atlantis, or some sort of hollow earth situation whose entrance is generally considered to be in the Arctic. The third is a belief in ancient and secret knowledge that is somehow associated with unimaginable power that can be both spiritual and technological in nature. And tying all of this together was a convoluted

mix of myth, world religions, emerging science, and virulent racism that was both flexible and wide reaching enough to seemingly fit any sort of narrative or belief system that you wanted to ascribe to it. Like water, it can find its way through even the finest seam, settling into the cracks in low places. And in the hard freeze of war, it destroys everything it permeates from within. What followed wasn't just one of the most gruesome and macabre chapters of our history, but one of the most truly bizarre as well. Many leaders and high-ranking officials within the Nazi party believed that a wild hodgepodge of things from Norse gods to ancient Atlantis to the legends of King Arthur to ancient Hindu. texts were literally true. And not only that, they believed that these stories contained clues to locating the supernatural powers and weapons described within them. And this wasn't just a

passing interest, but an obsession into which they poured considerable amounts of resources. In July of 1935, just four years before the start of World War II, head of the notorious Nazi SS Heinrich Himmler established the Ananurbe, which means inheritance of the forefathers. The primary function of the Ananurbe was to serve as a think tank devoted to the task of promoting the racial doctrines of the Nazi party. Specifically, this meant finding evidence in giant air quotes to support the idea that modern Germans descended from an ancient Aryan race that was biologically superior to other racial groups. That evidence could then be turned into propaganda, providing a scientific justification for Nazi ideology. To meet its aims, it employed scholars from a wide

range of academic fields, including archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, history, musicology, biology, biology, zoology, botany, astronomy, medicine, and more. However, it was alleged that this wasn't all that was going on within the Ananurbe. Himmler also believed that the group's investigations might reveal ancient secrets and even ancient weapons, which Nazi Germany could use against its enemies in the war. Through the Ananurbe, Himmler funded expeditions in search of Atlantis, Thor's Hammer, and Shambala, the spiritual kingdom of Tibetan Buddhism. And Himmler's hatred for all Judeo-Christian religions didn't stop him from mining their scriptures and legends in search of whatever ancient secrets may be hidden there as well. He launched campaigns in search

of relics like the Holy Grail in the Ark of the Covenant, which he believed to be the sources of tremendous otherworldly power. And according to certain UFO lore, the Ananerbe was successful, though what exactly they found is the matter of some debate. Some think they found vast ancient treasures or Templar gold. Something they found evidence of and blueprints for ancient highly advanced technology and weaponry. Some believe that they found a powerful relic like the Grail, which opened up a line of communication between the Nazi leadership and some sort of extraterrestrial or supernatural beings that gave them aid in the war. But whatever the source, what the Ananurbe discovered

gave them a staggering technological advantage that very nearly turned the outcome of the war. Or perhaps these technological advantages didn't come from the Ananurbe, or at least not only from the Ananurbe. According to some UFO lore, there are other explanations as well. Some say that the powerful medium Maria Orsick

was in communication with advanced beings who telepathically relayed instructions to her for the construction of advanced flying machines that looked very much like flying saucers. Still others claim that Germany had their own version of Roswell in 1936, just three years before World War II, when a UFO crashed in the Black Forest in Friesburg. The residents of that town allegedly awoke to what sounded like a massive plane crash and found a disc-shaped object that had crashed nearby

containing the bodies of multiple humanoid, but definitely not human, crew members. The story goes that within hours, members of the SS appeared and took possession of the craft and its crew, both of which were whisked off for scientific examination. From there, German scientists worked to reverse engineer the craft, leading to massive breakthroughs in anti-gravity technology. And in the lore, there are plenty of stories of experimental Nazi technology, including disc-shaped anti-gravity craft. Perhaps the most notorious of these was DiGlock, or the bell in reference to its shape.

This mysterious craft was said to stand 12 to 14 feet high and 9 feet wide and was made out of a thick ceramic material. When turned on, it was rumored to glow and spin and to have some sort of anti-gravitational effect. Although its exact purpose is the subject of some debate, it was generally thought to be some kind of Nazi super weapon, anti-gravity craft, or even possibly a time machine. It was believed to be powered by a mysterious, purplish, liquid, metallic-looking substance called Zero. 525, which was highly radioactive. As a result, most of the people who worked closely with Dygloc died from the effects of radiation, which was convenient for keeping this powerful weapon a secret. At the end of the war, it seemingly disappeared, vanishing without a trace. Other potential evidence of highly advanced Nazi aircraft began to be reported by Allied pilots

over both Europe and the Pacific, starting in the early 1940s. Again and again, they described seeing fiery lights in the sky. Glowing red, white, and orange, these lights were reported to follow allied aircraft, conducting impossible maneuvers and moving at impossible speeds. In their movements, they seem to be toying with them. Could the Nazis really have discovered paradigm-shattering technology during the war? And if so, could they have been helped by some mysterious non-human intelligence? These questions form the foundation for the bulk of UFO lore, and there are many who believe that the answer is yes, including, by the way, our old buddy Tom DeLong. Now, granted, just because Tom DeLong believes it doesn't mean that it's true, but based on everything we discussed

in episode six and seven, I always find it interesting to consider. But if the Nazis did develop this technology, where did it go? What happened to it after the war? According to the lore, top SS officers, including Hitler himself, escaped Germany with their advanced technology at the end of the war, to a land they called New Schwabinland. Established in 1939, New Schwabinland was a colony in remote Antarctica. It was said that the Nazis were led to this vast, icy wasteland from secret knowledge discovered by the Ananurve on their expeditions, perhaps from ancient texts in Tibet. As for what they found there and why they would choose to make their new home in such an inhospitable

climate, that is a matter of much debate. Some say that the ancient text. revealed that Antarctica was the original home of Atlantis and that the Atlantean civilization still existed under the ice and deep underground. Others say Antarctica is the location of a secret alien base. Whatever the specifics, the same sinister central theme remains the same. The Fourth Reich lives on somewhere in Antarctica, and they are potentially being aided by a highly advanced non-human intelligence with technology far beyond our understanding. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light,

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On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. Now that we've looked at the UFO lore surrounding World War II, the obvious question is, how much of this can possibly be true? And as is always the case in this world of high strangeness,

the answer to that is complicated. As we discussed in the previous episode, the modern concept of UFOs didn't really pop into the wider public consciousness until a few years after the end of World War II. And even then, it took several years and even decades more for the concept to fully evolve into the popular version of the phenomenon that we're familiar with today. Even the most fundamental tropes, such as their extraterrestrial origins, weren't a given in those early days, and only became so after a prolonged period of collective interpretation through the cultural zeitgeist. So what are we to make of UFO lore that predates what are largely regarded to be the earliest modern UFO sightings? We recognize that although 1947 marked the beginning

of the modern interpretation of the UFO phenomenon, that this phenomenon wasn't new at all. It was ancient. Humans have recorded interactions with strange beings and craft that come from the sky since the dawn of history. But whereas in the past, these events were interpreted

through a metaphysical lens, often being attributed to gods, angels, and fairies, 1947 marked the decisive inflection point where this phenomenon became widely interpreted to be technological, rather than mystical in nature. So certainly there's no reason to believe that there were no UFOs before 1947. We know that there were. And we know for a fact

that there were a large number of sightings of anomalous aerial phenomena throughout World War II by the armed forces on every side of the conflict. So the emergence of World War II UFO lore isn't arbitrary. It clearly has some correlation to actual recorded historical events. However, it's also clear that the particulars of this lore as we know it today developed largely through the lens of the understanding of the phenomenon that emerged in the years and decades after the war. More modern interpretations were applied to events in the ever more distant past, and the result, inevitably, are stories that are likely to point to actual events, but the extent to which they resemble these events is hard to say. Complicating matters further is that in applying

modern interpretations to the events of the past, one has the advantage of hindsight. The tales that were woven in the second half of the 20th century about UFOs during World War too, in many ways conform to recorded history. Real people, real events, real secret missions, and real secret technology are woven throughout the fabric of this lore, making it hard to tell where history ends and fantasy begins. These tales have an element of truthiness that can make them as difficult to fully debunk as they are to believe. And yet, if you're like me, there's a part of you that really wants to believe it, all of it. There's a reason that they based the entire Indiana Jones franchise on this stuff. It has all the stuff of myths and legends

wrapped up with the more modern and immediate symbol of evil in the form of Nazi Germany. To grapple with the new technological horrors that emerge during World War II, we instinctively reach for the myths of our past to help us find meaning. But myths are not meant to be taken literally, nor are they to be dismissed lightly, for they contain within them potent primordial symbols that can help us to begin to decode the aspects of human experience for which we do not have the words to speak. So let's take a little time to deconstruct this lore and see what new perspectives might be revealed. And we'll start this exercise where we started before with Madame Helena Blavatsky. When we think about the fantastical stories of Madame Blavatsky's life and her

channeling of the tenets of theosophy from the great hidden masters, the most obvious question is, is this chick for real? Surely she must have been a fraud, right? And the short answer is, of course she was. While various biographers have argued both for and against the reality of Blavatsky's extraordinary claims, it's difficult for any rational person to deny that entire portions of her story and backstory appear to be largely, if not entirely, fabricated. For example, the stories of her extensive travels have been often called into question. While it's not disputed that she managed to lose the chaperones, who were escorting her back to her family. What happened next is a matter of some considerable controversy. According to Blavatsky's later accounts, after arriving in Constantinople, she began nearly a decade of globe-trotting, visiting multiple continents and even managing to make it into Tibet.

There are a few reasons why her claims are disputed. the first is that if Madame Lavatsky really did go to all of these places, it would make her one of the greatest travelers of the 19th century. Traveling in the mid-19th century was grueling and dangerous. Travelers on the road were vulnerable to an almost innumerable set of dangers, ranging from disease to animal attacks to highway banditry. Travel by boat was equally treacherous, if not more so, for obvious reasons. So you can see how one might question how Madame Blavatsky, a plump, unathletic, aristocratic woman who was often traveling alone, could have managed to make even one of the journeys she later described in her writings, much less all of them. But that's not the

only reason that her accounts are questionable. There's also the fact that the stories that she later told of her travels were fairly fantastical in nature. Among these, she claimed to have saved a famous opera singer from being murdered, to have been a concert musician for the Royal Philharmonic in London, to have survived multiple shipwrecks, and to have encountered and studied and studied under a number of mysterious esoteric masters around the world. And the final and perhaps most damning challenge to Madame Lavatsky's accounts of her world travels is that her stories are almost entirely uncorroborated. She kept no personal diary or records during this time period,

and virtually no evidence exists to support her claims. Add to that the fact that her accounts often conflicted with each other in terms of chronology and other key details, and there is considerable reason to believe that this chapter of her life was largely a work of self-promotional fiction. There was also the question of her purported supernatural abilities. Madame Blavovsky made a name for herself in the spiritualist circles of New York City by conducting seances where she allegedly displayed these remarkable powers.

However, investigations that have been done into these claims revealed them to likely be rather cheap and obvious magic tricks rather than mystical manifestations. For example, letters allegedly sent from the deceased or from the secret masters with whom she was allegedly in contact, would often magically appear in a box on the wall in her dining room. And once, a teacup that was broken during a seance and placed into this box was miraculously fixed when it was open just a few moments later. Investigators noted that this box conveniently shared a wall with Blavatsky's private quarters, and it was claimed that a secret panel was found connecting them. However, while the mystical origins of Blavatsky's theosophy were almost certainly fraudulent,

Her work resonated deeply with many highly educated people, and her books are undoubtedly works of remarkable scope and scholarship, particularly for a woman of her day. Blavatsky's ability to blend Western esotericism and Eastern thought with cutting-edge science tapped into something potent. In the midst of the ontological chaos of the time period, theology provided a way for people to acknowledge the inroads made by science without abandoning their connection to the mystical. And it gave a new relevancy and weight to spiritual beliefs that had become increasingly under attack from science, using science itself as justification. The fact that much of this science consisted of idiosyncratic misinterpretations and misrepresentations of scientific theories didn't really matter. But to truly understand why this kind of ideology resonated so strongly with many in the lead up to World War II, we need to understand the rise of fascism itself. because although Blavatsky is often credited with birthing the ideology that eventually evolved into the core of Nazi belief, I'd actually argue that Theosophy was not the spark that lit that fire.

The environment that gave rise to fascist belief systems existed independently of this New Age thought, and what followed upon their inevitable collision was a symbiotic relationship that fueled both movements. The beginnings of fascist thought began to emerge in the 1880s as a revolt against the rising emergence of material. realism and positivism, which we discussed in the last episode, but also against urban liberalism and democracy. They condemned individualism, which they saw as corrosive to the basic structure of society, and believed that each person was only one part in a larger collective. Many believed that civilization was at a dangerous turning point, which would require a massive and total solution to avoid the destruction of humanity as we know it.

After Germany suffered a humiliating and financially devastating defeat in World War I, this fascist undercurrent began to gather into a mounting tsunami that would soon crash down upon Europe. In their defeat, Germany lost something vital, a shared national identity of which they could feel proud. And as their economy buckled under the weight of their war debts, many were looking for a scapegoat to blame for their sorry state of affairs. As is generally always the case, there were those who had profiteered off of the war. which only added to the working-class distrust of the urban elite. And due to a rising tide of fervent German nationalism, along with virulent anti-Semitism, the urban elite became more and more synonymous with the Jews.

As a result, Jewish people became the scapegoats for all of the ills that had befallen Germany since the end of the war, and were even blamed for the loss of the war itself. What theosophy and other similar occult and spiritualist movements provided for the Nazis was an ideological underpinning that served to tie together their disparate beliefs, wishes, and deep anti-Semitism into one unified narrative. Within this mythology, they were not a defeated and embarrassed people. They were the descendants of the Aryans, a noble race of highly advanced beings who themselves were descended from the gods.

And it was very easy within that paradigm to then relegate their enemies to the ranks of lower races, who were further removed from their divine origins, and therefore, less civil. and in many ways less human. And by positioning these sketchy, esoteric histories that were clearly steeped in the prejudices of their own time, alongside emerging scientific ideas like the theory of evolution, it lent a weight and credibility to their belief system that it wouldn't have otherwise had. That's a very dangerous combination. It allowed them to think the best of themselves and the worst of their enemies. It turned a political and social struggle into a mystical one with profound stakes. It gave them a destiny that had to be fulfilled and a birthright that had to be

defended, whatever the cost. And it gave them a means to shut themselves off to one of the most essential pieces of their own humanity, our fundamental recognition of the inherent value and sanctity of human life. And though it's been 80 years, we still don't have words for the darkness that followed. The next major piece of UFO lore is the idea that during World War II, the Nazis were in possession of advanced technology, far beyond that of any other country, and that this technology came dangerously close to changing the outcome of the war. So is there any evidence that this was the case? And it turns out that there is. Although the space race that would follow the war was almost exclusively a race between the Cold War superpowers of the

United States and the Soviet Union, it was actually the Germans who made many of the early breakthroughs in rocket technology that made space exploration a possibility. And many of these breakthroughs occurred during the war. In 1942, led by a brilliant young scientist named Werner von Braun, Germany developed the world's first ballistic missile, the V2. With a range of 200 miles, the V2 could travel at 3,500 miles per hour while packing a 2,200-pound warhead. It far surpassed anything that the United States or the Soviets had in their arsenals at the time. The German High Command hoped that this weapon would strike terror into the hearts of the British in particular and weaken their resolve. However, in the end, the V2 ended up playing

a much more minor role than they would have hoped. Though the first successful test flight took place in October 1942, the V2 wasn't prepared for operational combat firings until two years later in September of 1944, meaning that it was only a factor in the last year of the war, By 1944, the British had already withstood four years of conventional bombing and managed to more or less keep life humming along. So the threat of the V2 didn't carry the same weight that it once would have, which isn't to say that the V2 didn't cause significant devastation during the last year that it was in use, or that it wasn't a formidable weapon. In one particularly destructive attack in Antwerp, a V2 fell on a cinema, tragically killing 561 moviegoers.

However, despite its capacity for devastation, it didn't prove to be the game changer in the war that the Nazis had hoped it would be. The V2 did become a game changer after the war, though. The breakthroughs and racketry that the Germans made, led by von Braun, were essential to making space exploration a reality. Without that technology, we never would have made it to the moon. So how did the Germans manage to beat both the United States and the Soviet Union in the development of this critical new technology? and how did they manage to accomplish these things in such a short period of time? Could the stories be true? Did they really have outside help?

And where might this help have come from? Let's explore the possibilities, and we'll start with an easy one, the case of Maria Orsick. While there's plenty of lore surrounding the beautiful medium who channeled the plans for advanced flying machines from some extraterrestrial or otherworldly source, there's actually very little evidence to suggest that she ever existed. Most historians consider her to be either entirely fabricated or perhaps a composite of various other spiritualist mediums at the time. And as for the Vril Society, there is evidence that such a group did exist, but it likely didn't have nearly the power or influence within the Nazi party as is often suggested. It seems to have been a small occultist club whose significance was only conferred upon it years later as the Nazi UFO lore evolved. So if we're looking for the source of advanced Nazi technology, we'll have to look elsewhere.

One obvious possibility suggested by the lore is that Germany had a Roswell-esque UFO crash that gave them a starting point from which they could begin to back engineer advanced technology. So what evidence is there that this could actually be the case? Well, as you might imagine, there's not much to find. We've discussed in past episodes how notoriously opaque the Roswell cases. There's considerable evidence to suggest that something crashed in the desert in New Mexico that was almost certainly not a weather balloon and that the government covered it up. But you can't get much further than that without having to rely on rumor, speculation, or hearsay.

There's lots of theories, but so far at least, there's no real smoking gun. With the Black Forest crash in 1936, there's far less to go on even than that. In fact, in my research, I wasn't able to find any mention of the alleged crash before 1990. where it appeared in the book, Secret Societies and Their Power in the 20th Century by Jan von Helsing. I was unable to trace it back any further because it appears in this book without citation. And von Helsing, it should be noted,

is a fairly notorious conspiracy theorist whose beliefs can only be classified as highly anti-Semitic. He routinely cites the protocols of the elders of Zion in his work as a legitimate source. If you aren't familiar, the protocols is an incendiary and entirely fictional text outlining the alleged Jewish plan for global domination, which Nazis use to help justify the Holocaust. So not only does Van Helsing expose himself as someone who lacks the discernment to properly vet his sources,

but his clear pro-Nazi ideology gives him a clear motivation to advance narratives that romanticize and mythologize the Third Reich, despite having no evidence that these events actually occurred. Another piece of evidence for the crash that is often referenced in the lore is the Germans' experimentation with anti-gravity, that allegedly began shortly after the crash. But the evidence here is also highly circumstantial and not rooted in any direct evidence. The German's anti-gravity research was supposedly headed up by the Austrian naturalist philosopher

and inventor, Victor Schauberger. Shawberger in many ways was like the Austrian version of Nikola Tesla, though he worked mostly with water instead of electricity in his pursuit of more powerful and natural sources of energy. Like Tesla, his esoteric approach to his research, led him to important inventions and innovations. And also like Tesla, speculation about what he may have achieved beyond the scope of known science abounds. Of particular interest to Shawberger were vortices in water, which he believed to be the key to unlocking these secret energy sources and perhaps

even anti-gravity. And Shawberger actually designed a craft that was essentially just like a flying saucer using a water-based propulsion system. However, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that this craft was anything more than hypothetical. And repeated attempts by engineers over the years to create a working prototype based on his designs have proved unsuccessful. I'd also argue that it doesn't make a ton of sense, especially based on what we know today, that the Germans would have been messing around with water-based anti-gravidic propulsion systems if they were, in fact, in possession of highly advanced non-human technology. That just doesn't add up. So while we can't entirely rule out that the 1936 Black Forest UFO crash occurred, it seems to

pretty likely that this wasn't the case. Okay, so maybe there wasn't a UFO crash. Maybe they got the technology from somewhere else. Maybe they discovered a lost extraterrestrial relic, and maybe they may contact with a non-human intelligence by some other means. After all, what about DiGlock? If the Nazis had paradigm-shattering technology like that, we wouldn't need to know for sure where they got it from to recognize the real possibility that they were helped in some way by a non-human intelligence, right? And that's true. However, although DiGlock is perhaps the most famous example of the Nazis' alleged advanced technology, it is, unfortunately, one for which we have very little direct evidence.

In fact, it appears that the first mention of DiGlock was in a book that was published in 2000 by Polish author, Igor Wittkowski. In his book entitled The Truth About the Wonder Weapon, Wittkowski claims to have discovered the existence of DiGlock by reading transcripts from the interrogation of a former Nazi SS officer named Jacobs-Borenberg. Wittkowski alleged that he was shown the classified transcripts in August of 1997 by an anonymous Polish intelligence contact who had approached him claiming to have access to information and documents regarding secret Nazi weapons and technology. However, Wittkowski claimed that he was only allowed to transcribe the documents and was not allowed to make copies. So there is no direct

evidence to prove that these documents ever actually existed. In this way, DiGlock is an excellent example of how UFO lore can develop long after the actual events that the lore references, and how historical events can be used to anchor stories and ideas that are born out of wild speculation, if not outright fraud, to lend them more weight and credibility. After the publication of The Truth About the Wonder Weapon in 2000, the lore surrounding diglock exploded with various authors on the topic, each adding their own interpretation and their own spin. For example, in his book, The Hunt for Zero Point, author Nick Cook proposed the notorious SS officer Hans Kamler, the man who oversaw both the

construction of the concentration camps and the V2 rocket program, had traded DiGlock to the Americans in exchange for his freedom. It's an interesting theory. However, it's also a convenient one, considering that Kamler's actual fate after the war is unknown. Members of his staff claimed that he died of cyanide poisoning in Germany in May of 1945, although there is no evidence for this. And it could easily have been a ruse to cover up his escape, considering that a body was never produced. Some have claimed that he was captured and taken to the U.S. where he eventually took his own life inside a maximum security prison. But there's no real evidence to support this theory either. And this is how it goes with much of the UFO lore related to Nazi Germany. The flimsyest shred of

evidence, sometimes nothing more than a rumor, becomes the basis for a vast and complex mythology. The tendrils of this mythology twist their way through the historical record, co-opting and conforming to the details of actual people, places, and events just enough to give them the seeming weight of credibility. They say that where there's smoke, there's fire, and I tend to agree. But in the case of much of the Nazi UFO lore, I'd argue that it's not so much smoke as it is a thick fog that quickly burns away in the light of the morning sun. But then there's the case of the so-called foo fighters. On their surface, the anomalous lights in the sky that were reported by Allied pilots during the war would seem like they would be the easiest stories to dismiss. After all, no real contact was made, and these sightings never culminated in any kind of an attack,

as you'd expect, if they were German technology. And considering that the term Fu Fighter first appeared in the reports at the end of 1944, less than a year before the end of the war, it doesn't feel like much of a stretch to assume that these were fairly isolated incidents that were likely caused by exhaustion, combat fatigue, and simple misidentification. However, once you dive into it, there's a lot more to the story than meets the eye. In particular, I'd like to express my gratitude to Graham Rendell for his book, UFOs Before Roswell, European Food Fighters, 1940 to 1945,

which was an invaluable resource while doing my research. If you were at all interested in this subject, you should absolutely check it out. I'll leave a link in the episode description. Rendell's book is remarkable for compiling what is perhaps the most complete collection of reports concerning the phenomena that would become known as the foo fighters. And his research paints a clear picture of why it is that this phenomenon was not studied more closely. And it wasn't because these were isolated incidents. In fact, reports of anomalous lights and objects in the sky were recorded in official reports

throughout the war, both in Europe and over the Pacific. These reports included descriptions of flying disks, torpedoes, swarms of bees and balls of fire of unknown origin, performing maneuvers that should have been impossible. Airmen and intelligence officials alike were baffled by these objects in the sky, which they generally believed to be some sort of German secret weapon. However, as the war continued on for years without the emergence of a German super weapon that could explain these anomalous events, they only grew more perplexing. In the fog of war, it was difficult for anyone to connect with dots on these anomalous events, partly because the invents themselves were so varied,

and partly because the explanations for them kept changing to keep pace with the suspected German technology that they were thought to represent. First, they were balls of light, and then rockets, and then finally jets. The name Food Fighters wasn't adopted until the end of 1944, at which point some of the crews had become used to the encounters and mostly ignored them. And then, when the war ended in 1945, these phenomena seemingly disappeared. Intensive searches of German aeronautical facilities after the war didn't turn up anything that might explain the so-called foo fighters. So there was no real reason for anyone to pursue the matter further.

And when the modern UFO phenomenon emerged two years later in 1947, the new paradigm of the flying saucer didn't seem to have as much correlation to the balls of lights and swarms of bees in the skies. And so the footh fighters were mostly forgotten. However, looking at these reports now, it's hard to deny that these airmen were seeing something in the skies. The reports are too numerous, and these highly trained aviators and intelligence officials are too credible as observers to be summarily dismissed. And whatever they were, we can be fairly certain that they weren't secret German technology, because if they'd had it, they would have used it for something more impactful than the benign harassment of Allied pilots.

And looking at these reports, it's also clear that many of these anomalous objects displayed at least one of what Lou Alizondo calls the five observables of UAPs, anti-gravity, instantaneous acceleration, supersonic speeds without signatures, low observability, and transmedium travel. So what the heck were they? And what relation, if any, do they have to the modern UFO phenomenon? There's simply no way to know. But I do think it's interesting to recognize that the reports of the foo fighters aren't unique in the history of warfare. In fact, going back to the time of the Romans during the Punic Wars in the 3rd century BC,

there were multiple reports over a series of years about gleaming chariots and ships in the sky. There was even one report in 217 BC that spoke of a fleet of these gleaming ships that were in the shape of the traditional round convex Roman shield, which, when turned on its side, looks a lot like a fun. saucer. Whatever UFOs are, they've seemingly always had an interest in our warfare. And that's a disquieting thought. So back to our original question, is there evidence that the Nazis had highly advanced technology during World War II? And the answer is, not really. Most of the evidence that exists is highly circumstantial and speculative, with most of it emerging only in the last 30 years or so and rapidly evolving from there. And what credible

evidence there is of the existence of anomalous and highly advanced technology during World War II, namely the foo fighters, is almost certainly not German in origin. So that just leaves the German rocket program, which admittedly did manage to develop rocket technology that was far beyond the reach of both of the world's superpowers at the time, and without which we wouldn't have made it to the moon. Could that be evidence of non-human intervention in the Nazi war effort? Maybe, but probably not. The grim reality of the German rocketry program was that their advantage likely didn't come from an outside source, but from within. During the war, thousands of prisoners of the concentration camps were forced to help build the V2 factory and assemble the rockets where they were worked literally to death or worse. At least 10,000 died from illness, beatings, or starvation.

So yeah, that's probably how they beat us. So, given everything that we've discussed about the evolution of Nazi UFO lore, you might assume that we can write off the more fantastical accounts of the Nazis searching for powerful ancient relics like the Holy Grail as mere fabrications. I mean, that part doesn't even really make sense, right? Why would anti-Christian occultists be seeking the object of a distinctly Christian myth? But weirdly, this part of the story does seem to have some real truth to it. As unbelievable as it may sound, certain.

members of the Ananurbe really were on a quest of sorts to find ancient relics from legends of old, like some evil warrior version of the Knights of the Roundtable. Some of them believed, not only that these relics were real, but that they represented advanced ancient technology that would give them an advantage in the war and lead them to victory. In chief among them was Heinrich Himmler. Himmler's racist supremacist worldview was rooted in the most virulent strain of spiritualism, as informed by writers like Madame Lavatsky. Himmler believed establishing a new Aryan empire would require resurrecting ancient Germanic myths and iconography.

He believed that for the Aryan people to triumph over the lesser races, they needed to reject traditional Christian morality, replacing it with a new kind of pseudo-religion that drew on chivalry and mysticism. The SS itself, in Himmler's mind, was an elite organization in the tradition of the Teutonic Knights, in order which, like the Templars, came into existence during the Crusades. The notorious SS iconography on their uniforms was derived from ruin symbolism of the double lightning bolt. In Himmler's vision, the headquarters of the SS was the Camelot of his modern-day

order of knights. One of the rooms was even named after King Arthur, while another was designated the Grail Room. In one particularly bizarre letter to the Ananerbe, Himmler stated his belief that Thor's Hammer was an early, highly developed war weapon of our forefathers. Believing that the Third Reich could harness this power if the hammer was found, Himmler demanded that they find all places in the Northern Germanic Aryan cultural world where an understanding of the lightning bolt, the thunderbolt, Thor's Hammer, or the flying or throne hammer exists. He also sponsored and participated in a very literal quest for the Holy Grail in 1940,

led by the eccentric medievalist and eventual member of the SS, Otto Ron. In the Arthurian opera, Parciful, by Hitler's favorite composer, Richard Wagner, the Grail is located in a castle called Montselvatt. This opera was based on a medieval poem called Parcival, which was written by Wolfram von Aschungbuck. Ron believed that this poem had the secret to the true location of the Grail, and that it contained clues which linked the story of Parcival with the Cathars. Catharism was a movement which flourished in medieval Europe, particularly in France.

The Cathars revived old Gnostic concepts of Christianity that radically opposed church teaching. They believed, for example, that the God of the New Testament and the God of the Old Testament were separate entities, the latter a jealous, sinful entity, and the former, a benevolent entity who would liberate humanity from him. Such ideas led to their excommunication and condemnation from the church, and ultimately to a crusade against them, resulting in their wholesale slaughter. Eventually the French royal forces besieged the Cathar stronghold of Monsignor, a remote fortress in southwestern France for nine grueling months before the Cathars finally surrendered. Hundreds of Cathars were burnt alive in a bonfire after refusing to renounce their blasphemous beliefs. However, legends have maintained that a number of Cathars managed to smuggle themselves

out of the fortress undetected before their brethren surrendered, carrying with them an immense secret treasure. And so Ram, believing in the connection between the Cathars and the legends of the Grail, naturally assumed that the Grail must have been among this treasure. And Himmler, who was particularly biased toward basically everything about this worldview, thought this made perfect sense, and so he supported the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to find the Grail's final resting place. According to the lore, Hitler himself was also seriously invested and involved in the search for the Grail. He had a special interest in a 12-paneled painting called The Adoration of the mystic lamb, more commonly referred to as the Ghent altarpiece. It was alleged that one panel

of the painting, depicting a sacrificial lamb standing on an altar, while its blood flows into a chalice believed to represent the grail, contained a secret code that would reveal the location of the grail. However, while it's clear that stories of Hitler's obsession with his particular work of art are based in reality, it likely wasn't because he believed that it would lead him to the grail. The Ghent altarpiece, which dates back to 1432, holds quite a significant place in art history for several reasons. The first is that it is recognized as the first major oil painting. Oil had been used to bind pigments to painting since the Middle Ages, but Jan van Eyck was the first to demonstrate the true potential of oils. Oil-based paints allowed for far greater subtlety in detail than largely opaque

egg-based paints that had typically been the norm before. Because of this innovation, it can easily be considered one of the most important and influential paintings ever made. The second reason that the Ghent Altarpiece has a special place in history is that it's been stolen more frequently than virtually any other painting. Hitler was just one of many who conducted such a heist, squirreling it away in a salt mine in the Austrian Alps, along with a vast treasure trove of other significant works of art that he planned to someday display in a giant super museum the size of a small city that would be built to house all of the greatest works of art. And beyond just being significant as a work of art in its own right. The Ghent altarpiece was of particular significance

to Hitler. After the end of World War II, as part of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, it was forcibly repatriated to Belgium from where it had previously been displayed in Berlin. Hitler was driven by a desire to correct what he saw as the humiliation inflicted on the German people by the Treaty of Versailles, and recapturing the altarpiece would go some way toward that goal. And the fact that it was by a Germanic artist in the realistic Northern Renaissance style that Hitler preferred only added to its appeal. Granted, Hitler had almost certainly heard the rumors about the Ghent altarpiece containing the secret location of the Grail, and he may have even been intrigued by that

possibility. However, that isn't necessarily evidence that he was directly engaged with the search for the Grail, as the painting had much more personal and profound significance to him that superseded any of the rumors surrounding it. There are many, many more tales and the lore about secret Nazi quests to find secret relics and even lost lands, from Atlantis to Hyperborea, to Shambala. Some, like their expedition to Tibet, to find evidence of the origins of the Aryan race, are quite real, while others, with stories of lost continents and subterranean worlds,

seem to exist only in the dreamy haze of myth. But there's one other notorious Nazi expedition, for which we have a considerable amount of evidence, and it's one that occupies perhaps the most notorious space within the lore. On December 17, 1938, the new Schwabia expedition left Hamburg for Antarctica aboard the MS Schwabinland. The secret expedition had 33 members, plus Schwabinland's crew of 24. A month later, on January 19, 1939, the ship arrived at the Princess Martha Coast in an area which had recently been claimed by Norway. But the Germans paid little mind to this claim. Nazi German flags were placed along the icy coast.

claiming it as their own. They named this new territory, New Schwabinland. But what were they looking for a world away at the ice-covered South Pole? What was so important that they would divert those resources to make this expedition at the dawn of the Second World War? And could the bases that were built there have provided a place for what remained of the Third Reich to escape at the end of the war? There's much more to that story than you might think. And that's where we'll pick up next time. I'll see you then. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish.

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