Deeper Space: Episode 4

EPISODE 4: DARK ALLIANCE

“We hold these individuals to be potentially dangerous . . . Their former eminence as Nazi Party members and supporters raises the issue of their fitness to become American citizens and hold key positions in American industrial, scientific and educational institutions.” -Albert Einstein to President Harry S. Truman

UNFOLDING OPERATION PAPERCLIP

On July 6th, 1945 the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a classified memorandum titled the “Exploitation of German Specialists in Science and Technology in the United States.” The Military Intelligence Division of the War Department, G-2, issued a memo out to eight agencies of the War Department that German specialists could be implemented within US intelligence to promote post-war military research.

Initially known as “Operation Overcast,” Operation Paperclip assembled more than 1,500 German and Austrian specialists to participate in a post-war intelligence program facilitated by the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS). This initiative, designed to drain the brain trust of Germany, was fueled by conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Although the USSR and the US were Allies, after WWII tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated to the Cold War. Why?

After World War Two, Soviets occupied eastern Europe including Poland, East Berlin, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, which all became satellite entities of the Soviet Union.

Although the Soviet Union joined the Allies during WWII, the USSR remained a concern to US intelligence and national security. As early as the 1920s, the Soviet Union established espionage programs within the United States. This was part of the Communist program, that was to convert the world masses to their ideology.

Did the USSR intimidate other nations? Did other world powers seek German intelligence for national defense?

In Gaia’s fourth episode of Deep Space “Dark Alliance,” researcher David Hatcher Childress explains that Great Britain could not have assimilated Nazi scientists into a permanent Space Program due to the fact that the Third Reich inflicted insurmountable devastation upon the UK, particularly London. The United States however, had enough distance between them and Germany to facilitate such a program. Therefore, it was imperative that the United States build military power that could match its closest threat and former ally.

It was not widely publicized that the UK first gleaned scientific information from the Nazi scientists the after Germany surrendered in May 1945.

When the British learned that the US was recruiting German scientists, they asked to use the specialists for their own rocket studies first. The US consented, and released German scientists, such as Wernher von Braun, Walter Dornberger, and Arthur Rudolph, into the British project known as “Operation Backfire.” The purpose of this operation was to conduct a series of V-2 tests on Germany’s north coast. Wernher Von Braun’s V-2 rocket was in fact one of the German weapons that demolished many parts of London. Aptly named, Operation Backfire thwarted American plans to intercept German individuals indefinitely and not all scientists were returned to aid the US.

Did the United States make other Faustian bargains?

Operation Paperclip was not the first time that the United States government sacrificed moral integrity in the name of scientific advancement. Following the Axis’ surrender, the US discovered Japanese war atrocities in Manchuria. In Unit 731 the Imperial Japanese Army conducted gruesome experiments including vivisections, forced biological and chemical procedures on the local Chinese population. When it came to prosecuting war crimes, the United States looked the other way and took this information for personal gain.

What was the greatest asset gained by the United States government?

WERNHER VON BRAUN

“Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently.”

Since childhood, rocketry and space exploration fascinated Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (1912 – 1977), and early in life the math and science prodigy earned degrees in mechanical engineering and physics. Soon after completion of his doctorate, Wernher became the technical director of the V-Weapons program for the German army and an official for the Mittelbau-Dora Planning office, a division of the SS.

For many historians, von Braun’s Nazi affiliation remains ambivalent and ambiguous. The scientist stated that he was forced to join the National Socialist Party in 1939, and that his “membership in the party did not involve any political activity.” However, records show that von Braun applied for an official Nazi party membership number in November, 1937. It also cannot be said that von Braun, ambivalent or not, remained ignorant to the human suffering that aided the V-2 program. Von Braun admitted to visiting weapon production plants where concentration camp prisoners provided slave labor.

Upon surrender in 1945, von Braun may have been a primary negotiator to bring himself and over 100 other rocket scientists into the Operation Paperclip program. Upon his arrival at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, the German began his work helping US scientists reverse engineer looted V-2 rockets.

Following Sputnik’s launch (1957) and the start of the space race, von Braun managed the design team building the first American satellite and the apparatuses that propelled John Glenn into orbit. Eventually, Wernher von Braun became the director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the lead designer of Saturn V rocket, the vehicle which launched Americans to the Moon in 1969.

Recently, an episode of This American Life told a unique story concerning von Braun’s detainment at P.O. Box 1142 in Fort Hunt, Virginia. Digging deeper, one can find the Nazi scientist popping up in other places of pop culture. From Tom Lehrer’s comic Tune to Disney’s 1950s space specials, Werner von Braun left behind a powerful legacy.

Did the Nazis leave any other signs behind that might suggest they were involved in the Secret Space Program?

FASCIST ICONOGRAPHY AND UFOS

In his interview in “Dark Alliance” and in his book The Secret Space Age (2014) Olav Phillips references Otto Binder’s 1972 article “Secret Messages from UFO’s” published by Saga. Phillips posits that the symbols sighted on post-war UFOs may be the smoking gun to the connection between the Nazi/American alliance and government commissioned UFOs. Why would recognizable Western symbols mark extraterrestrial aircraft?

Phillips makes the point that, “An alien intelligence would think, feel and write in an alien way . . . if an alien were to place marking on their spaceship they would use alien writing not english or any other earthbound language.”

Many can recognize the Nazi swastika, but there are other lesser known fascist symbols spotted on unidentified spacecraft?

THE FASCES

The Fasces or fascio littorio was an ancient Roman symbol, and the term fascism originated from the emblem. The fasces is a bundle of rods or sticks bound around an axe. Historically, this item was presented to Roman magistrates as a symbol of their singular jurisdiction over the population. The axe, an allegory of the power, and the reeds, a symbol of the people continued as an icon of governmental control into neoclassical architectural design. For example, two bronze fasci frame the US flag in the House of Representatives interior. In Italy, the fasces symbolized new Italian unification while simultaneously enforcing the idea of a revitalized Roman empire headed by the Duce. Phillips believes that a trinity of fasci marked a UFO spotted in 1967 over Madrid, Spain.

THE WOLFSANGEL

The Wolfsangel, in its abstracted form as a horizontal or vertical “f” or “z” shape, was an antiquated wolf trap in which meat would be hung from a forked metal apparatus. This device took on mystical associations and became a symbol of German peasant independence during the 15th century. The emblem appears on German coat of arms, SS Panzer Uniforms, and was used by the Nationalist Socialist Movement of the Netherlands during WWII. In 1954, the vertical “f” version of the Wolfsangel appeared on a UFO over the San Bernardino Mountains.

THE THUNDERBOLT

The double thunderbolt symbol identified members of the Schutzstaffel (SS), the organization that maintained the Nazi police state under Heinrich Himmler. Derived from pre-Roman runes, the double thunderbolt continues as a symbol for white supremacists today. The British Union of Fascists used a thunderbolt inclosed within a perfect circle to symbolize “a flash of action embedded in the circle of unity.” In 1973, a Belgian man sighted a UFO marked with a long thunderbolt inside a dark ring. According to Olav Phillips, this image bears a striking resemblance to the logo of the British Union of Fascists.