Nazi Moonbase Read online

  Through 1946, Kammler and his remaining followers worked to develop the Antarctic base into a working development and manufacturing facility which would enable them to continue the war. While the Haunebu IV completed its fitting-out, work continued on various other advanced weapons projects as materials and facilities permitted.

  Artist’s impression of the air battle in February 1947 which prompted the execution of the Bifrost Protocol. Although the American task force was repulsed, it was clear that the Antarctic base was not secure. (Artwork by Darren Tan)

  Operation High Jump

  Part of Kammler’s plan was to liquidate his rival von Braun and transfer the Peenemünde rocket group to Antarctica along with his other projects, but von Braun was able to escape Kammler’s trap and surrendered to the advancing American forces. It was during his debriefing by American intelligence that he first mentioned Kammler’s plan and the secret base in Antarctica, but it was almost a year before he was believed.

  In late December 1946, US Navy Task Force 68 converged on Neuschwabenland from three directions. Commanded by Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Operation High Jump was a secret mission with the cover of establishing an American research base: with the Cold War just beginning and the Soviet Union using captured German scientists in its race to match America’s nuclear capability, Washington did not want to alert the Kremlin to the existence of yet more Nazi Wunderwaffen and spark a war for control of Antarctica.

  After a series of skirmishes in the waters around Antarctica, a force of Haunebu craft attacked Task Force 68. All of Byrd’s aircraft were destroyed and several ships were damaged, but none of the saucers mounted heavy-enough weapons to destroy a surface ship. Seventeen days after the fight began, Byrd withdrew on February 23, 1947, but Operation High Jump had proved that Neuschwabenland was vulnerable and Kammler knew that the Americans would return in greater force. His followers worked through the brutal Antarctic winter to complete the giant saucer, and at some time between March and November of 1947, Operation Einherjar was put into effect: all the personnel and assets at Point 211, as US Intelligence had codenamed the base, were removed to the Moon, and Neuschwabenland was abandoned.

  In the closing months of the war, Haunebu saucers and U-boats were used to transfer personnel and materials to the Neuschwabenland base in the Antarctic: a staging post where final preparations were made for the journey to the moon. (MasPiz / Alamy Stock Photo)

  Operation Windmill

  It was December before another American expedition reached Antarctica. Codenamed Operation Windmill, it was ostensibly a geographical survey and training mission and a step toward keeping the previous expedition’s “Little America” base open permanently. Under cover of this mission, the personnel of Operation Windmill searched for the Neuschwabenland base.

  An extensive area was surveyed using three helicopters and an amphibious airplane, while a Marine Corps detachment equipped with tracked all-terrain M29 “Weasel” vehicles stood at the ready. The abandoned base was discovered on January 3, 1948, but bad weather delayed investigation for several days. By February 16 it was evident that the Nazis had abandoned Point 211, taking their saucers with them. The task force was recalled, and Operation Windmill was over.

  The Nazi Space Program

  German scientists were exploring the possibility of space travel long before war broke out, and science fiction had as strong an appeal in Germany as it did in the United States.

  In 1925 – two years before Fritz Lang’s seminal Metropolis and nine years before the first Flash Gordon comic strip – a film titled Wunder Der Schöpfung (Wonders of Creation) showed a German scientific team traveling through the universe in a spacecraft that served as the symbol of progress and an age of new technologies; it included the stirring slogan “Now Germany belongs to us, tomorrow the whole solar system.” The film was a huge hit on its first release, perhaps because it promised a brighter tomorrow for the dispirited German people after the humiliating defeat of the Great War.

  German youths – including the young Wernher von Braun – were avid readers of books like Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums – der Raketen-Motor (The Problem of Space Travel – the Rocket Motor) and Die Rakete (The Rocket), a magazine published by the Society for Space Travel (VereinfürRaumschiffahrt), and German engineers experimented with rockets and other propulsion systems.

  Alongside the pioneering rocket work of Wernher von Braun and others, the Order of the Black Sun worked to develop the theories of the Thule Society and the Vril Society to create another kind of craft entirely: disk-shaped, with speed and acceleration that defied conventional physics, and powered by motors whose revolutionary design blended science and mysticism according to Black Sun principles. While von Braun’s rockets laid the foundations of both US and Soviet space flight, it was the saucers that became the vital component of the Bifrost Protocol – and of the Walhalla moonbase itself.

  WERNHER VON BRAUN

  Born Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun in Wirsitz, Prussia (now Wyrzysk, Poland), von Braun could trace his ancestry through both parents to European royalty. He developed a passion for astronomy after receiving a telescope as a gift, and he was arrested at the age of 12 for causing a disturbance after fitting rockets to a toy car and sending it hurtling down a public street.

  Undeterred, von Braun studied physics and mathematics in order to pursue his interest in rocket engineering, and in 1932 he earned a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Berlin’s Technical High School (Technische Hochschule).

  Although space travel remained his primary interest, he became involved in military rocket development. By his own account, he was a reluctant Nazi, joining the Party in 1939 and the SS in 1940 only after it became clear that this was the only way to continue his work in rocket science.

  He became the technical director of Germany’s rocket development facility at Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea, helping develop rocket engines and rocket-assisted takeoff apparatus for aircraft as well as the Aggregat rocket series that led to the development of the V-2 ballistic missile.

  Along with his brother Magnus, von Braun surrendered to American forces on May 2, 1945. He was taken to the United States and became a leading light in NASA’s rocket program, culminating in the Apollo Moon landings. Some doubt the sincerity of his claim that he worked for the Nazis reluctantly: it was routine for Operation Paperclip to “clean up” the records of imported German scientists to make them more acceptable.

  The V-2 rocket was the only development of the Aggregat project that saw service in the war. Larger intercontinental missiles were planned but never produced. (PD)

  Nazi Rocket Research

  The initial impetus for the Third Reich’s space program developed out of the Amerikabomber project.

  The Amerikabomber Project

  Soon after the United States entered the war, the Reich Air Ministry issued a requirement for a long-range heavy bomber capable of striking the continental United States from bases in Europe, some 3,600 miles away, with the atomic weapons Germany was racing to develop.

  Despite design submissions from every major aircraft manufacturer in Germany, the Amerikabomber project yielded little more than a handful of prototypes. Material shortages, Allied bombing of Germany’s heavy industry, and the rapid advance of Allied and Soviet troops into Germany rendered the project unfeasible, and almost all available resources went toward the defense of the Fatherland.

  The Sänger Silbervogel

  Co-designed by Austrian engineer Eugen Sänger and his wife, mathematician Irene Bredt, the Silbervogel (Silver Bird) was a rocket-powered bomber designed to fly at about 3,100mph, or a little over Mach 4. Launched from a rocket sled and lifted to a suborbital altitude of 90 miles (475,000 feet), the plane would skip off the denser upper layers of the stratosphere like a stone across a pond, delivering a payload of up to 8,800 pounds – about 10 percent smaller than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima – before descending across the Pacific Ocean
to land in friendly Japanese territory.

  In 1942, the Sängers’ design was considered too radical, and the Air Ministry focused on more conventional aircraft designs from established manufacturers including Messerschmitt, Heinkel, and Junkers.

  The Aggregat Series

  Based at Peenemünde on Germany’s Baltic coast, the Army Research Center (Heeresversuchsanstalt) had been developing ballistic missiles since the early 1930s under the leadership of Wernher von Braun.

  Their Aggregat series included the A4, which developed into the dreaded V-2 rocket. As the Aggregat program continued, the Center explored features like recovery parachutes, wings, and hybrid rocket-ramjet designs. The A9/A10 Amerikarakete (America Rocket) was a two-stage missile intended to render the Amerikabomber program unnecessary, and the A12 was a four-stage orbital rocket designed to take payloads of up to 22,000 pounds into low Earth orbit.

  Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun surrendered to American troops after escaping a murder attempt by his rival Hans Kammler. Officially “cleansed” of his Nazi past, he went on to become a major figure in the American space program. (PD)

  Kammler vs von Braun

  After Kammler assumed control of all secret weapons production, he found himself increasingly in conflict with von Braun, who fought his efforts to absorb the Peenemünde rocket group into Kammler’s own SS E-IV. Braun resisted fiercely, though his reasons for doing so are still debated. According to the statement von Braun gave to officers of Operation Paperclip after his surrender, he was a reluctant Nazi who only joined the SS when it became clear he would be replaced if he did not, and who objected deeply to Kammler’s use of concentration camp prisoners as slave labor.

  Documents captured from SS E-IV, on the other hand, paint von Braun as snobbish, abrasive, and highly territorial, hinting that the blue-blooded Prussian von Braun regarded the ardent Nazi Kammler as an upstart political appointee rather than a fellow scientist. Kammler’s background was in construction and civil engineering, whereas von Braun had been studying rocketry since his youth; he was happy for Kammler to attend to the day-to-day problems of manufacturing weapons based on von Braun’s designs, but he deeply resented Kammler’s interference with the research and development process.

  Von Braun was also dismissive of the Amerikabomber project and the various saucer initiatives, maintaining that long-range ballistic missiles offered a cheaper and more practical means of bombarding enemy cities and a firmer foundation for space travel. He regarded Kammler’s other projects as a waste of resources – or, worse, a theft of resources from his rocket group – and was not afraid to say so.

  This rivalry between von Braun and Kammler was to have a profound effect not only on the development of the Walhalla moonbase, but also on postwar space research and the shape of the Cold War.

  Early Saucer Craft

  While von Braun’s rocket group continued their work along purely conventional lines, German saucer craft were inspired by more esoteric knowledge. In its early years, Nazism was influenced by several mystical groups, including the Thule Society and the Vril Society.

  The Thule Society

  Originally the Study Group for Germanic Antiquity (Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum), the Thule Society was founded in 1918 and named after a northern country from Greek mythology. It has been claimed that a young Rudolf Hess was a member, along with other leading Nazis. The Society’s research combined history, archeology, and occultism, and was instrumental in developing the idea of an ancient Aryan race with superhuman abilities. It dedicated itself to recovering the lost knowledge of the Aryans, and flying saucer technology was among the fruits of this effort.

  From 1920 onward, Hitler took steps to distance the growing National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) from occult and mystical groups, including the Thule Society. The Society was officially suppressed, but continued its work in secret with the aid of powerful supporters within the Nazi Party. Without its knowledge, it is unlikely that the Nazi space program could have existed.

  The Vril Society

  In his 1871 novel The Coming Race, English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton described a subterranean master race whose power was based on a mysterious energy named vril. Although his work was fiction, it was embraced by leading Theosophist Helena Blavatsky and by several other occultists whose work would help shape Nazi ideology and mysticism.

  VRIL DISK FIGHTERS

  The Vril-1-Jäger (Vril-1 Fighter) was the first armed disk aircraft. Developed under the auspices of SS E-IV, it was 37 feet in diameter and was armed with two 30mm MK 108 cannon and two 7.92mm MG 17 machine guns. Early models had a solid metal dome, which was later replaced by a clear glass dome. While its top speed was reported as 7,456mph (or almost Mach 10), it could slow down for combat with conventional aircraft and execute 90-degree turns without subjecting its crew to excessive G-forces. Seventeen craft were built, and 84 test flights took place between 1941 and 1944.

  The Vril-2 Zerstörer (Destroyer) was a heavy fighter concept that never left the drawing board: its advanced oval shape was too far ahead of its time. Little is known about the Vril-3 through Vril-6 craft, which may not have advanced beyond concepts or prototypes.

  The Vril-7 Geist (Ghost) was spurred by the Amerikabomber project. It was 146 feet in diameter and carried a crew of 14. Arado built one prototype in 1944, but by now resources were being diverted to the Haunebu project (see below).

  The Vril-8 Odin was the last Vril series design. The only prototype was in early testing when Berlin fell.

  All of the Vril series craft were capable of space travel. According to captured Black Sun documents, further development of the series was aimed at developing a craft that could travel to Aldebaran, some 65 light years away, to make contact with the Aryans there. Among the designs on the drawing board at the war’s end was the Andromeda-Gerät (Andromeda Device), a huge cigar-shaped spaceship capable of making the interstellar journey.

  These same documents also record that the vril medium Sigrun was vocal in her opposition to the development of the Vril craft for military use. She vetoed Arado’s request for a Vril Triebwerk drive to use in their E.555 Amerikabomber prototype, and clashed with Kammler repeatedly during the development of the Vril series saucers. It has been argued that this friction led directly to Kammler’s patronage of the Haunebu project, which was under his sole control.

  The Vril Society, named for this mystical energy that combined electromagnetism, gravity, and all the other forces of the universe, began as a splinter group within the Thule Society, but quickly took on a life of its own. It allegedly developed ties with Aleister Crowley’s Order of the Golden Dawn in England, and with other occult groups around the world. Like the Thule Society, the Vril Society was suppressed as part of Hitler’s move away from esoteric thought, but its work carried on in secret.

  The Society’s most significant work for the Nazi space program was a series of séances which claimed to make contact with an advanced Aryan civilization in the Aldebaran system, some 65 light years from Earth. In the course of these séances, vril mediums acquired vital information that enabled German engineers to create the advanced alloys and propulsion systems required for successful saucer development.

  The Vril Society was revived some time in 1943 as the Black Sun began to pour resources into saucer research for the Bifrost Protocol. The process was not entirely smooth, however: several vril mediums maintained that saucer technology should only be used for peaceful space travel and opposed its military applications. Nevertheless, the Order of the Black Sun ignored objections and the development of armed saucer craft continued at an accelerated rate. Significantly, the Vril saucer series was discontinued at this point and succeeded by the Haunebu series, whose development was entirely under Black Sun control.

  The Aryans of Aldebaran

  The idea of the Aryan race began in the 19th century as a purely linguistic classification, but through the influence of T
heosophy and other esoteric doctrines it became identified with a race of enlightened superhumans who lived in prehistoric times and whose diluted blood persisted in the Germans and other Nordic races of the 20th century. Much of Nazi racial policy was aimed at removing the “impurities” of other races from the German ethnic stock and breeding back to a pure Aryan strain – a “master race” that would rediscover its lost superhuman powers and take its place as the rightful rulers of the world.

  The Thule Society was suppressed by the Nazi Party when they took power in 1933, but much of its thinking was shared by the Vril Society. As early as 1917, the German-Croatian medium Maria Orsitsch was conducting séances for the Vril Society and claiming to have made contact with an Aryan civilization living on a planet in the Aldebaran system, in the constellation of Taurus. Together with another medium called Sigrun, she relayed a series of documents in a secret Templar script and other languages, which are said to have formed the basis of all German saucer research.

  The Jenseitsflugmaschine

  The Jenseitsflugmaschine (Other-world Flight Machine) was the first German saucer craft. It was built in the summer of 1922; according to Thule Society documents the design was transmitted psychically to the vril medium Sigrun by Aryans who had been living in the Aldebaran system since 1919.

  The craft’s disk was made up of three stacked circular plates with a cylindrical motor running down the center of the assembly. When the motor was activated, the disks contra-rotated, creating a powerful electromagnetic field.

  It is thought that the oscillating field was intended to open a wormhole to Aldebaran and place the machine’s builders in direct contact with the advanced Aryan civilization there, but no such journey is documented. However, the surviving reports indicate that the Jenseitsflugmaschine demonstrated impressive flight characteristics, and Hitler authorized further development until 1934, when the craft was dismantled and taken to the Messerschmitt works in Augsburg for storage. The craft was almost certainly destroyed by American bombing, which devastated the site between February 1944 and February 1945.