Lately on UFO Updates there has been an embarrassing thread going on in which the idea that the Nazis may have been involved in UFO research (or something like that) in Antarctica has been floated (based upon some book that's about to come out). This is all rubbish, and I'm not going to dignify the "debate" by providing any more details, other than to note that the people who seem to put any stock in this notion are people who have no - and I mean NO - knowledge or understanding of the history of the period under discussion (if you're really interested, for some reason, you can subscribe to Updates and check them out yourself). Yes, they occasionally get facts right, but history isn't just about dates and facts - it's about understanding what they mean (that's what makes history interesting, and relevant).
Anyway, my point here is to note that the Nazi meme is not a new one in ufology, but it has been a dangerous one, for reasons that many people have pointed out in the past, including Strange Days... Indeed commentator Dave Furlotte (see here). Neo-Nazis like Ernst Zundel have used the UFO subject in the past to lure the most gullible people into their web of hate and lies on the theory that if a person was willing to swallow the kind of bilge that Zundel and others pedaled with regards to Nazi UFOs, then they were identified as prime targets for a far more dangerous kind of bilge, Holocaust denial (anyone who wants a more detailed examination of the Zundel story should pick up a copy of Warren Kinsella's excellent book, Web of Hate; for Zundel and UFOs, see The Nizkor Project's page here).
Does this mean that all people who support the "Nazi bases in Antarctica claims" that pop up now and then are neo-Nazis? Of course not. But their kind of rank stupidity does demonstrate that there are indeed people out there who are simply incapable of separating fact from fiction - people who are so desperate to believe in UFOs as aliens, or whatever, that they will believe virtually anything else. This is just this kind of "believer blindness" that neo-Nazis like Ernst Zundel, or cult leaders like Marshall Applewhite, always count on, something that anyone interested in the study of the UFO subject should always keep in mind.
Paul Kimball
6 comments:
Yeah, but the Nazi UFO meme *does* make for some interesting fiction; see W.A. Harbinson's "Genesis" and "Inception."
Fiction is fine. Indeed, when it comes to Nazis and aliens, I think it's ALL fiction! ;-)
Hey, Paul! First time poster, long time reader here. Don't you think that some of the unanswered questions reported by Nick Cook, Joseph Farrell, etc. about the end of WWII, Nazi experiments, and USAR behavior bear some further looking? You certainly don't have to be a believer in aliens or in Nazi ideology to think that there might be some fire causing all that smoke. Admittedly, like Roswell, the water is muddied by sixty years of time and witnesses of questionable value.
Marmer:
Always nice to "meet" a long-time reader!
The Nazi UFO meme is one that I just have never seen any solid evidence for - just a lot of unfounded (and wishful, frankly) speculation based on facts that are usually twisted into pretzels to get the conclusion folks want.
Not to say that people didn't take the possibility of Nazi UFOs seriously in the years immediately after the war - indeed, I've written about this before [see http://redstarfilms.blogspot.com/2005/10/canada-and-flying-saucers-part-iii.html] - Canada and Flying Saucers, Part III [Enter... the Nazis?]
But there was never any smoke to that fire, as time has shown. And there was never any smoke to the "fire" (i.e. theory) that the Nazis had Antarctic bases with UFOs, which was the junk that Zundel was peddling, and which pops up again every now and then.
Thanks for popping by.
Paul
As for antarctic bases, I have only read information from sources like Nexus magazine, so am unlikely to get converted to be a Nazi. So I cannot prove anything, but note that it is interesting and seems to match the Nazi interest in researching alternative weapons etc.
NAZI UFO's in general however are a different matter. You should look up the work of Viktor Schauberger. He appears to have been a researcher into natural energies based on vortexes. This work and the theory behind it, is substantial enough to have produced several books by Callum Coates (see Living Energies for a technical overview of the work by Viktor).
Clive
Apart of Schauberger, like Anon commented, there's also this story about the Horton brothers, who (supposedly) developed advanced airplane prototypes, and were brought to the USA under the Operation Paperclip. I even remember that in the 90s, Popular mechanics run an article using the Horton story to explain Roswell.
There's a chilean nazi (not neo, this guy's pretty old) called Miguel Serrano, who is a fervent defender of Hitler's UFOs and nazi mysticism. Lots of weird stories mixing nazis & Ufos come from that part of the world, I can tell you. Ever heard of "Isla Friendship"?
Post a Comment