9 - Invisible Eagle

Rumors of Nazi Survival to the Present
There are, of course, a number of problems posed by the idea that the pattern of world events is being controlled by a secret colony of Nazis operating out of an impregnable fortress somewhere in Antarctica.

 

The claims made by conspiracy theorists about ongoing Nazi activity in the present day sound at best like lurid and rather distasteful science fiction, at worst like the ravings of seriously unbalanced minds.

 

Among the questions one feels obliged to ask are:

• How would such an operation be financed?

• How could such an elaborate colony remain hidden for the last 55 years?

• For that matter, how could it have been built in the first place?

• And what could be its ultimate aim?

• Given the enormous power and fantastic technology attributed to it by conspiratologists, what are its (doubtless nefarious) plans for the rest of humanity?

In this final chapter, we will look at some of the claims concerning Antarctica's hidden residents, and at the evidence for the reality of this ultimate conspiracy.
 

Operation Eagle Flight
As we have just noted, one of the most important questions raised by the Nazis in Antarctica theory involves finance: how could a large, permanent base be constructed and maintained for more than half a century on the most inhospitable continent in the world?

 

For an answer to this question, we must return to the closing months of the Second World War when it was becoming clear to Nazi officials that their 'Thousand-Year Reich' faced imminent destruction.

In August 1944, while an amphetamine-fuelled Adolf Hitler was venting his contempt for the German people whose incipient defeat had betrayed his vision ('If the German people was to be conquered in the struggle,' he said, 'then it had been too weak to face the test of history, and was fit only for destruction"), his deputy, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, was at the Hotel Maison Rouge in Strasbourg planning the continuation of Nazi power and ideology.

 

Addressing the meeting of Nazi Party officials and German business leaders, Bormann stated:

'German industry must realize that the war cannot now be won, and must take steps to prepare for a postwar commercial campaign which will in time ensure the economic resurgence of Germany.' ⁽²⁾

These steps were implemented under the code name Aktion Adlerflug (Operation Eagle Flight) and resulted in the 'massive flight of money, gold, stocks, bonds, patents, copyrights, and even technical specialists from Germany'. ⁽³⁾

 

Along with the central Deutsche Bank and the chemical cartel I. G. Farben, one of the largest industrial organizations in Europe, Bormann succeeded in establishing 750 front corporations in Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and Argentina.

 

Of course, Bormann would have been unable to achieve this without substantial help from both within and outside Germany. This came in the form of connections with banks and businesses dating back to before the war, ⁽⁴⁾ indeed to the financing of the Nazi Party itself following the elections of 1933.

 

On 20 February of that year, 25 of the most prominent industrialists in Germany were invited by Hermann Goering to a meeting with Adolf Hitler, who stated:

'An impossible situation is created when one section of a people favors private property while another denies it. A struggle of that sort tears a people apart and the fight continues until one section emerges victorious ... It is not by accident that one man produces more than another; the concept of private property is rooted in this fact ...

 

Human beings are anything but equal. As far as the economy is concerned, I have but one desire, namely, that it may enter upon a peaceful future ... There will, however, not be a domestic peace unless Marxism has been exterminated.' ⁽⁵⁾

Another of these connections was with the American International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation (ITT), which continued to trade with Nazi Germany after America's entry into the war, selling communications and military equipment such as artillery fuses.

 

Journalist Jim Marrs states that ITT's German chairman, Gerhardt Westrick, was,

'a close associate of John Foster Dulles, who would become US secretary of state under President Dwight Eisenhower, and partner to Dr Heinrich Albert, head of the Ford Motor Co. in Germany until 1945'.

He adds:

'Two ITT directors were German banker Baron Kurt von Schroder and Walter Schellenberg, head of counter-intelligence for the Nazi Gestapo.' ⁽⁶⁾

According to former New York Times writer Charles Higham, Standard Oil of New Jersey (ESSO) secretly sold gasoline to Germany and fascist Spain.

'The shipments to Spain indirectly assisted the Axis through Spanish transferences to Hamburg.' ⁽⁷⁾

By changing the country of registration for Standard's tanker fleet to Panama, company spokesmen could claim that the oil was coming not from the United States but the Caribbean. ⁽⁸⁾

There were also numerous banking connections, one of which was the partnership established in 1936 between the J. Henry Schroder Bank of New York and several Rockefeller family members to form Schroder, Rockefeller and Company, Investment Bankers that provided economic support to the Rome-Berlin Axis.

'The partners in Schroder, Rockefeller and Company included Avery Rockefeller, nephew of John D., Baron Bruno von Schroder in London, and Kurt von Schroder [of the Bank of International Settlements] and the Gestapo in Cologne ... Standard Oil's Paris representatives were directors of the Banque de Paris et de Pays-Bas, which had intricate connections to the Nazis and to Chase [National Bank].' ⁽⁹⁾

According to investigator Paul Manning, Hermann Schmitz, head of I.G. Farben, was president of Chase National Bank for seven years prior to the war, and later held as much stock in Standard Oil as did the Rockefellers. He held other shares in General Motors 'and other US blue chip industrial stocks, and the 700 secret companies controlled in his time by I. G. [Farben], as well as shares in the 750 corporations he helped Bormann establish during the last years of World War II'.

 

Manning continues:

'The Bormann organization in South America utilizes the voting power of the Schmitz trust along with their own assets to guide the multinationals they control, as they keep steady the economic course of the Fatherland. The Bormann organization is not merely a group of ex-Nazis. It is a great economic power whose interests today supersede their ideology.' ⁽¹⁰⁾

The financial relationship between the Nazis and the Swiss banks has been well documented.

 

Through processes of investment and money laundering, approximately 15 billion Reichsmarks was moved through Switzerland, equivalent to three per cent of America's gross domestic product (GDP) in 1944.

'To put this into today's terms, three percent of America's GDP is $200 billion, which is more than the entire GDP of Switzerland. Allow for interest, compounded over 50 years, and the value of the Nazi cache that went through Switzerland moves into the region of a trillion dollars.' ⁽¹¹⁾

Over the years there has been considerable speculation on the fate of Martin Bormann, Hitler's deputy and the second most powerful man in the Third Reich. One of the main characteristics of the Nazi survival theory is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the idea that the Nazi leaders themselves managed to escape from Berlin during the Allies' final assault.

 

Since Bormann played such a large part in planning the continuation of Nazi financial interests and power after the war, it is worth pausing briefly to note the findings of the internationally esteemed historian Hugh Trevor-Roper who, as a wartime intelligence officer, was charged with the task of establishing the ultimate fate of Hitler and his inner circle.

According to Trevor-Roper:

In 1945 the evidence [on Bormann's fate] was conflicting and uncertain. Several witnesses maintained that Bormann had been killed in a tank which exploded when hit by a Panzerfaust [bazooka] on the Weidendammer Bridge during the attempted breakthrough on the night of 1-2 May. On the other hand, all these witnesses have admitted that the scene was one of great confusion and none of them claims to have seen Bormann's body

... Further, even in 1945 I had three witnesses who independently claimed to have accompanied Bormann in his attempted escape. One of these witnesses, Artur Axmann, claimed afterwards to have seen him dead. Whether we believe Axmann or not is entirely a matter of choice, for his word is unsupported by any other testimony. In his favor it can be said that his evidence on all other points has been vindicated. On the other hand, if he wished to protect Bormann against further search, his natural course would be to give false evidence of his death.

 

This being so I came in 1945, to the only permissible conclusion, viz: that Bormann had certainly survived the tank explosion but had possibly, though by no means certainly, been killed later that night. Such was the balance of evidence in 1945. ⁽¹²⁾

Trevor-Roper adds that by 1956 the situation remained unchanged by new evidence. In 1953, a former SS major, Joachim Tibertius, made a statement to a Swiss newspaper, Der Bund, in which he claimed to have seen Bormann after the tank explosion, at the Hotel Atlas.

 

According to Tibertius:

'He had by then changed into civilian clothes. We pushed on together towards the Schiffbauerdamm and the Albrechtstrasse. Then I finally lost sight of him. But he had as good a chance to escape as I had.' ⁽¹³⁾

The absence of concrete evidence for Bormann's death in 1945 spawned a number of claims of his survival, including one that placed him in Bolivia.

 

Another claim came from Reinhardt Gehlen, who had been an Abwehr officer during the war and had subsequently become head of the new West German intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst,

'thanks to his useful experience ... and the beginning of the Cold War'. ⁽¹⁴⁾

In 1971, Gehlen stated in his memoirs that during the war he had come to the conclusion that Bormann was actually a Soviet spy.

 

Following the war,

'Bormann had sought and found protection in Moscow, where he had occasionally been seen by reliable witnesses and had recently died'. ⁽¹⁵⁾

However, as Trevor-Roper informs us, Gehlen's claims were refuted in 1972 'when two human skeletons, which had been dug up in waste ground near the Lehrter Station in West Berlin - i.e. not far from the place where Axmann claimed to have seen the bodies were forensically examined and identified as those of Bormann and his companion in flight, Dr [Ludwig] Stumpfegger', Hitler's surgeon. ⁽¹⁶⁾

Although it has been established since 1972 that Bormann's attempt to escape from the ruins of the Third Reich ended in death, it is equally certain that his brainchild, Operation Eagle Flight, met with considerably greater success.

 

According to conspiracy researcher Jim Keith, the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, stated in 1945 that,

'Nazi Party members, German industrialists and the German military, realizing their victory can no longer be attained, are now developing postwar commercial projects, endeavoring to renew and cement friendships in foreign commercial circles and planning for renewals of pre-war cartel agreements'. ⁽¹⁷⁾

Keith goes on to quote the minutes of the secret meeting between Bormann and a group of German industrialists, mentioned earlier:

'The [Nazi] Party is ready to supply large amounts of money to those industrialists who contribute to the post-war organization abroad. In return, the Party demands all financial reserves which have already been transferred abroad or may be later transferred, so that after the defeat a strong new Reich can be built.' ⁽¹⁸⁾

Project Paperclip
Those who subscribe to the idea of Nazi survival in the post-war period cite another documented historical fact in support of their theories.

 

After the end of the war, both the Americans and the Russians began to search throughout occupied Germany for technical, intelligence, military and other scientific information. In September 1946, President Harry Truman authorized Project PAPERCLIP, a program to bring selected German scientists to America.

 

Aside from expertise in their fields, the main requisite for their acceptance for residence in the United States was proof that they had not been active members of the Nazi Party, and had not displayed any allegiance to Hitler.

Background investigations of various German scientists were conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), which found them all to have been enthusiastic Nazis. Nevertheless, it was decided that to send them back to Germany would probably result in their expertise being exploited by the Soviets and would thus constitute a greater threat to US security than any Nazi sympathies they might have had.

 

Among these scientists was, of course, Wernher von Braun, who had been technical director of the Peenemunde rocket research centre, home of the dreaded V-2 missile that had caused such carnage in London and elsewhere. According to conspiratologists, OSS Director Allen Dulles ordered the scientists' dossiers to be cleansed of Nazi references, with the result that by 1955 more than 760 German scientists had been granted US citizenship. This was done without the knowledge of President Truman.

One of those who benefited from Project PAPERCLIP was the Abwehr officer Reinhardt Gehlen, whose insurance policy of microfilming a vast number of documents concerning Soviet intelligence came to the attention of Dulles. Gehlen and Dulles formulated an arrangement by which the Nazi and American intelligence apparatus would be combined, ostensibly on the basis of a common interest in a defense against communism.

 

However, far from being committed exclusively to the protection of the United States and Western Europe, Gehlen's organization was committed exclusively to the security of the ODESSA (Organization of Veterans of the SS) and other 'rat lines' that had been set up to aid the escape of more than 5,000 Nazis - and to set up Nazi colonies throughout the world.

Jim Keith writes:

Once the Gehlen Organization was in place, with an estimated 4,000 intelligence specialists in Germany and more than 4,000 undercover operatives in the Soviet bloc, the perceived threat to the United States by the Soviets was aggravated by Nazi intelligence, and the Cold War was inevitable. Gehlen and his cronies seemingly never admitted that Germany had lost the war and simply persisted with Nazi objectives, using different means to destroy the USSR, namely collaboration with the United States and the OSS/CIA.

 

The Nazis may have, in addition, foreseen the devastating results of a Cold War between the US and the USSR. The Cold War provided a financial burden which has destroyed Russia and left the United States as the world's biggest debtor nation ... ⁽¹⁹⁾

With secret control of hundreds of billions of dollars in financial and industrial assets, not to mention access to the intelligence agencies of the post-war superpowers and with hidden colonies throughout the world, this 'Nazi International' was in a position to reverse the failure of the Third Reich and finally achieve global domination.

 

According to conspiratologists, the main headquarters of the Nazi International was - and is - in Antarctica.
 

The Mysterious Voyage of Captain Schaeffer
On 25 April 1945, the German submarine U-977 embarked on one of the most remarkable voyages of the Second World War. Commanded by Captain Hans Schaeffer, the submarine left Kiel Harbour in the Baltic, stopped briefly for fuel at Christiansand South the following day, and arrived at Mar del Plata, Argentina nearly four months later, on 17 August. ⁽²⁰⁾

 

In his subsequent interrogation by the Allies, Schaeffer stated that he had heard over the radio that the war had ended several days after leaving Christiansand South, and had decided to make for Argentina rather than staying in Europe. He offered his crew the option of being put off the submarine on the Norwegian coast or continuing on with him.

Some of Schaeffer's crew opted to return to Germany, so the U-977 remained hidden in Norwegian waters until 10 May, when the departing crew members were put ashore near Bergen. Schaeffer and the rest of his crew,

'then embarked upon what surely must have been one of the most remarkable naval feats of the war: a journey through the North Sea and English Channel, past Gibraltar and along the coast of Africa, to finally surface, all of sixty-six days later, in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean'. ⁽²¹⁾

Over the next month, the U-977 evaded capture by diving, surfacing, and erecting imitation sails and funnel to make it look like a cargo steamer from a distance. ⁽²²⁾

On 17 August 1945, the U-977 put into Mar del Plata, in spite of Schaeffer having heard over the radio that the crew of another fleeing German submarine, the U-530, had been apprehended on the River Plate and handed over to the United States. During his initial interrogation by the Argentine authorities, Schaeffer was asked if he had carried anyone of 'political importance' on the voyage, to which he replied that he had not.

 

Harbinson informs us that several weeks later Schaeffer was again interrogated, this time by a special Anglo-American commission composed of high-ranking officers. It seems that this commission wanted to explore the possibility that the U-977 had transported Hitler and Martin Bormann first to Argentina and then on to a secret Nazi base in Antarctica. ⁽²³⁾

The English and Americans apparently considered this to be a realistic possibility, for they subsequently flew both Schaeffer and Otto Wehrmut, the commander of the U-530, to Washington, D.C., where the interrogations continued for several more months. It is not clear what happened to Wehrmut at this point, but Schaeffer was taken to Antwerp, Belgium, where he was interrogated yet again. The U-977 itself was thoroughly searched and then taken to the United States where it was destroyed under orders from the US War Department. Schaeffer was then sent back to Germany, but decided to leave his country and return to Argentina. ⁽²⁴⁾

The testimony of Captain Schaeffer served as an early inspiration for the idea that high-ranking Nazis had escaped the destruction of the Third Reich and were continuing with their plans for world domination in one or more secret locations. Schaeffer's voyage suggested to some that the ultimate destination for escaping Nazis was Antarctica, via Argentina.

 

The German Navy Admiral Karl Doenitz is reported to have stated in 1943:

'The German submarine fleet is proud of having built for the Fuhrer in another part of the world a Shangri-la on land, an impregnable fortress.' ⁽²⁵⁾

Where was this 'impregnable fortress' - if it existed?

 

It is a matter of historical fact that Nazi Germany maintained an intense interest in the Antarctic continent throughout the war.

 

As we shall now see, that beautiful, mysterious and hostile place also holds a prominent position in the thoughts of those who subscribe to the Nazi-survival theory.
 

Operation Highjump
Between 1946 and 1947, Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd contributed to the US Navy Antarctic Developments Project, also known as Operation Highjump.

 

This operation was ostensibly an exercise in polar combat, survival and exploration; however, conspiracy theorists have suggested another, far more sinister purpose. Operation Highjump began approximately one year after the arrival of the U-977 at Mar del Plata, Argentina. The vast resources placed at Byrd's disposal have suggested to many that the operation was intended as an actual assault force - but an assault against what, or whom?

The British author W. A. Harbinson has perhaps done more than any other writer to popularize the idea that the Nazis had developed extremely advanced aircraft designs by the end of the Second World War. In his novel sequence Projekt Saucer and his nonfiction study Project UFO, he also offers evidence of a secret flying-disc base in Antarctica.

 

In his novel Genesis (1980) Harbinson includes a lengthy afterword, which was later reprinted as the introduction to Man-Mode UFOs 1944-1994- 50 Years of Suppression (1994) by Renato Vesco and David Hatcher Childress and which describes how, in May 1978, a single-issue tabloid paper called Brisant was being given away at Stand 111, in a scientific exhibition in the Hannover Messe Hall.

 

This paper contained two articles: one on the scientific future of Antarctica, and the other on flying-disc technology at the end of the war (see Chapter Eight).

In its article on Antarctica, Brisant asked why the Operation Highjump assault force docked near the German-claimed region of Neu Schwabenland on 27 January 1947, why it then divided into three separate task forces and, most importantly, why there had been so many foreign press reports that the operation had been a disaster.

 

Harbinson writes:

That expedition became something of a mystery. Subsequent official reports stated that it had been an enormous success, revealing more about the Antarctic than had ever been known before. However, other, mainly foreign reports suggested that such in fact had not been the case: that many of Byrd's men were lost during the first day, that at least four of his airplanes inexplicably disappeared, and that while the expedition had gone provisioned for six to eight months, the men actually returned to America in February 1947, after only a few weeks.

 

According to Brisant, Admiral Byrd later told a reporter (I could find no verification on this) that it was 'necessary for the USA to take defensive actions against enemy air fighters which come from the polar regions' and that in the case of a new war the USA would be 'attacked by fighters that are able to fly from one pole to the other with incredible speed.'

 

Also, according to Brisant, shortly after his return from the Antarctic, Admiral Byrd was ordered to undergo a secret cross-examination - and the United States withdrew from the Antarctic for almost a decade. ⁽²⁶⁾

The article carried a serious and startling implication:

• that Operation Highjump had been a military invasion force disguised as a training and exploratory group

• that it had intended to deal with a secret colony of Nazi survivors in an elaborate underground facility that had been constructed during the Second World War

• that this invasion force had met its match in the form of a squadron of Nazi-built flying discs based at the colony

The reason for the United States' temporary withdrawal from Antarctica was, allegedly, to allow itself time to develop its own flying discs, based upon designs captured at the end of the war.⁽²⁷⁾
 

Nazi UFO Bases in Antarctica?
Most reasonable people would dismiss as fantastic nonsense the idea that many Nazis fled the ruins of the Third Reich and took up residence in a secret Antarctic colony, armed with a squadron of flying discs with which to protect themselves.

 

However, the paranoid conspiracy theories that have proliferated in the second half of the twentieth century are based not so much on reason but rather on elaborate extrapolations of puzzling but inconclusive evidence. In the present case, this evidence centers on the undeniable interest the Third Reich maintained in Antarctica throughout the war.

 

German ships and U-boats constantly patrolled the South Atlantic between South Africa and the region of Antarctica containing Neu Schwabenland, and it is certainly possible that many of these voyages could have included shipments of personnel and supplies for the construction of heavily fortified facilities.

 

When we add to this the testimony of the captain of the U-977, Hans Schaeffer (which admittedly may well be false), the claims of the neo-Nazi publication Brisant that such trips included the transfer of flying-disc research teams and disc components, and the rumors regarding the disastrous failure of Byrd's Operation Highjump, we have the ingredients of a powerful and enduring modern myth, in which the evils of Nazism did not meet destruction at the hands of the victorious Allies in 1945 but continue to exert a terrible influence over human affairs to this day.

Indeed, it is somewhat ironic that the political system that identified the Jews as its scapegoat and moved with such barbarism against them should now be chosen by many conspiracy theorists as the scapegoat responsible for the machinations of a putative 'New World Order'.

 

It is quite possible that the concept of Nazi survival itself has survived to the present day because of the very extremity of the crimes perpetrated by the Third Reich. While it may be argued that our continuing interest in Nazi Germany constitutes an unhealthy fascination with the suffering and terror of an ultimate inhumanity, there is also a case for saying that this interest is born of a deep and despairing bafflement (see the Introduction).

 

I believe it is not going too far to suggest that the elaborate conspiracy theory involving Nazi survival is born of a deeply ingrained suspicion that such wickedness could not have been completely defeated at the war's end; this suspicion may well have been reinforced by the fact that the volkisch and Pan-German forerunners of the Nazi Party were influenced by occult and mythological belief systems, combined with the more generalized occult revival occurring throughout Europe in the post-war years.

Of course, conspiracy theories cannot survive without conspiratologists to conceive and propagate them.

 

We shall now, therefore, turn our attention to the means by which the theory of Nazi survival has been developed.
 

The Black Order
Throughout the post-war period, material has been added constantly to the sinister mythological system built around the idea that the Third Reich continues its activities in a hidden location.

 

This cabal of surviving Nazis is sometimes referred to as the Fourth Reich but more often as the 'Black Order'.

 

Those who contend that such a concept can have no place in a rational person's world view are underestimating the subtle power exerted by the strange concepts contained within the field of popular occultism.

 

The British writer Joscelyn Godwin has produced a splendid, highly informative study of this field in his book Arktos The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival, in which he maintains an admirably skeptical standpoint while acknowledging that the notions embodied in popular occultism must be treated with respect, if only for their powerful influence over the public mind.

 

He also includes a pertinent quote from the German Pastor Ekkehard Hieronimus regarding popular beliefs:

What is going on in the lower reaches of society is probably very much more potent and effective than what happens in intellectual circles. We think, of course, that it is the intellectuals - now in the broadest sense of the term, in which I include the scientists -who define our life. But lately the intellectuals have been rather like a film of oil on a great puddle of water: it shines mischievously and thinks that it is the whole thing, but it is only one molecule thick. I can see quite definite things coming towards us. The things going on in the so-called cultural underground, or the so-called subculture, are very strange. ⁽²⁸⁾

Godwin then wryly offers an example of a product of this 'subculture', a report from the 16 April 1991 issue of the London newspaper the Sun, that claims that the ruins of Atlantis have been discovered in the Arctic by a joint French-Soviet research expedition.

 

The,

'proof is a photomontage of some Doric columns rising from an icy landscape. While the vast majority of people seeing this would probably think it interesting but almost certainly spurious, the idea is nevertheless firmly embedded in their unconscious. As Godwin notes (and as we have discussed in earlier chapters), uncritical belief in the literal reality of certain occult concepts aided in no small degree the rise of National Socialism.

 

'One has to be thankful that our tabloids are not proclaiming Aryan supremacy or describing Jewish ritual murder; but one may well ask what collective attitudes are being formed by the currents in the "great puddle" of popular occultism.' ⁽²⁹⁾

It is one thing for a collective attitude to admit the possibility of visitation by alien spacecraft, or the existence of ghosts or relict hominids such as Bigfoot, the Yeti and so on; it is quite another to admit of the undying - perhaps supernatural - power of an ideology that has already irreparably demeaned humanity and could quite conceivably wreak havoc once again.
 

'Gotzen Gegen Thule'
In 1971, Wilhelm Landig published a strange novel entitled Gotzen gegen Thule (Godlets Against Thule). In an echo of the nineteenth-century vogue for presenting fantasy as a 'true story', Landig subtitles his novel 'a fiction full of facts' and claims that it contains accurate information on the radical advances in aviation and weapons technology made in the years since the end of the war.

 

Gotzen gegen Thule is fundamentally an adventure story that follows the exploits of two German airmen, Recke and Reimer (which Godwin translates as 'Brave Warrior' and 'Poet' respectively) ⁽³⁰⁾, who are sent to a secret German base in the far north of Canada towards the end of the Second World War. This base, known as Point 103, is a large underground facility possessing highly advanced technology and supplied by powerful allies in the United States.

 

Its occupants constitute a force opposed to the Third Reich, which is seen as a Satanic force.

Point 103 is, in fact, solidly anti-racist, as evidenced by one scene in which a conference there is attended by,

'a Tibetan lama, Japanese, Chinese, and American officers, Indians, a Black Ethiopian, Arabs, Persians, a Brazilian officer, a Venezuelan, a Siamese, and a full-blooded Mexican Indian'. ⁽³¹⁾

Travel to and from this remote and ultra-secret facility is by a highly advanced aircraft called the V7, which is shaped like a sphere with a rotating circular wing containing jet turbines. Interestingly enough, even the responsible and skeptical Godwin is willing to concede that this part of Landig's novel may well have a basis in fact (see Chapter Eight).

The two airmen are sent on a mission to Prague to prevent the disc-plane technology from falling into Allied hands; following the end of the war and the defeat of Nazi Germany, Point 103 declares itself independent and continues with its pursuit of Thulean ideals. These ideals are explained by another character, an ex-Waffen-SS officer named Gutmann ('Good man').

 

Godwin provides a summary of the Thulean philosophy:

The light of Thule comes not from the East but from the North. Its tradition is 'Uranian,' being derived from Uranos, lord of the cosmic world order and of the primordial Paradise of the Aryan Race, situated at the North Pole. It was Uranos's usurping son Saturn who brought upon this originally happy and unified humanity the dubious gift of the egoic state.

 

The temptations consequent upon this change in the human constitution lead to the loss of primeval unity and, eventually, the destruction of Saturn's realm, Atlantis. Thereupon the warm climate of the secret island of the Hyperboreans was suddenly replaced by bitter winter. The primordial races of the Arctic and of the Nordic Atlantis both lost their homes, and were forced to migrate southwards.

 

Wherever they settled - in Europe, Persia, India, and elsewhere - they tried to remake their lost Paradise, and in their myths and legends cherished the memory of it. ⁽³²⁾

As Godwin notes, Uranos and Saturn seem to be personifications of events in remote antiquity; however, the Thulean religion included an unmanifested God beyond space and time, and a Son through whom the will of the Father operates and who is identified with the laws of nature.

 

Landig himself identifies the legend of Thule (which in geographical terms is located close to Point 103) with that of the spiritual centre of the world, sometimes called Shambhala. The reader will recall Nicholas Roerich's encounter with a golden flying disc, described in Chapter Four, and how his guide stated that the UFO represented the beneficent influence of Rigden-Jyepo, the King of the World, who was watching over them.

 

Through another character, a French collaborator named Belisse ('from Belisane, sun god of the Gauls'), ⁽³³⁾ Landig describes in elaborate detail the nature of this phenomenon, which he calls 'Manisolas'. They are living, intelligent bio-mechanical entities with a complex life cycle that begins as a circle of light and continues through a metallic form before reaching the reproductive stage. Through a regenerative process, a new Manisola grows within the womb of the adult.

The regenerated part is expelled by the remaining mother-nucleus as a new energetic circle of light, corresponding to a birthing technique. This new circle enters on the same seven developmental stages, while the expelling maternal element rolls itself into a ball, which then explodes. The metallic remains contain particles of copper.

 

The optical impressions that eyewitnesses of these Manisolas have had up to now are basically quite uniform. In the daytime they display an extremely bright gold or silver luminescence, sometimes with traces of rose-colored smoke which then often condense into grayish-white trails. At night the disks shine in glowing or glossy colors, showing on occasion long flames at the edges and red and blue sparks, which can grow so strong as to wreathe them in fire.

 

Most remarkable is their power of reaction against pursuers, like that of a rational creature, far exceeding any possible electronic self-steering or radio control. ⁽³⁴⁾

Landig goes on to describe how, throughout the ages, all mythologies refer in one way or another to the Manisolas, which are seen as symbols of spiritual potency, unity and love. Although Point 103 is claimed to be a non-racist society, the Thuleans nevertheless consider Israel to be in eternal opposition to their ideals, and remember the time when their ancestors, the Nordic Atlanteans, were held in slavery by Semitic sorcerers.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Ark of the Covenant is brought into this bizarre occult adventure and is described as a kind of battery for astral energy to be used in magical operations. This energy is the fertilizing 'force-field of the Aryans', which is stolen by Hebrew magicians and stored in the Ark for their own anti-Aryan purposes.

 

The international conspiracy against the Aryans is further defined when the characters travel to Tibet and meet another German, Juncker ('Aristocrat'), ⁽³⁵⁾ who tells them that the Asiatic peoples are waiting for a great warrior who will come from the subterranean realm of Agartha and lead them to domination of the world.

 

We then learn of the nature of 'Shambala' and 'Agartha', which is another perversion of Buddhist teaching, similar to that suggested by Ravenscroft in The Spear of Destiny (see Chapter Five).

 

The central point of Gotzen gegen Thule is that the Third Reich arose with the assistance of the twin power centers of Agartha and Shambhala and was defeated when it succumbed to the materialistic attractions of Shambhala, thus destroying the balance between the two.

 

We can look again to Godwin for a good translation of Landig's original:

The source of material energies of the left hand, which have their seat in Shambala, is the upper-earth city of power and might, which is ruled by a great King of Fear. But it is the same seat of Shambala that a part of the western secret brotherhoods and lodges regards as their point of origin, from which come the promises and warnings of a Lord of the World.

 

This Shambala is a searchlight of our will! Then there is the second source: Agartha, the inner, underworld realm of contemplation and its energies. There too is a Lord and King of the World, who promises his domination. At the proper moment, this center will lead good men against the evil ones; and it is firmly connected with Brahytma, that is, God. And that is the king to serve, the one who will set up our empire and rule over the others ... [T]he men in [the Third] Reich ... joined themselves with the energies of Shambala, of pure force, and in their secret way worked against the other men of [the] Reich ...

 

And behind these energies which manifest themselves in Shambala stands the Caucasian, Stalin-Dugaschvili! He knew everything, he knew the men of the circle in [the] Reich and he played his own cards with them as if they were their own. Stalin-Dugaschvili had the support of the Lord of Fear and Power against [the] Reich! ⁽³⁶⁾

In the final stages of the novel, the heroes leave Tibet but are captured in India by the British, who place them in a prisoner-of-war camp.

 

When they finally return to Germany, it becomes clear that they will probably never rejoin Point 103, which,

'seems to have forgotten them: they ruefully admit ... that if it still exists, it has probably had to isolate itself completely from the world of today'.

All that remains to [the Thuleans] is to constitute a 'Fourth Reich in exile,' patiently waiting for the Age of Pisces to reach its inevitable end.

And as the Fish Age passes, so St Peter's religious tyranny in Rome will crumble ... and the Jewish Ark will lose its potency. Then, says Landig, the ... banner of the Aryans will fly again ... ⁽³⁷⁾

Added to the weird flights of fancy, Gotzen gegen Thule contains several statements that mark it out as a work of pernicious historical revisionism, such as Juncker's claim that the bodies in the liberated concentration camps were actually those of Germans killed in Allied air raids on Munich. ⁽³⁸⁾

 

Aside from this, the novel manages to weave together a wide variety of myths, all of which have come to be associated with the concept of Nazi survival:

• Nordic mythology

• UFOs as man-made aircraft

• the subterranean realms of Shambhala and Agartha

• the Hollow Earth

• the Holy Grail

• the international conspiracy to inaugurate a secret One-World Government

While it might be expected that such a ridiculous and (in its attempt at historical revisionism) morally reprehensible tale would sink into a merciful literary oblivion, it did nothing of the kind; instead, it entered the murky realm of the cultural underground, where it was discovered by certain interested parties who saw in it an opportunity to further their own agendas.
 

Ernst Zundel and 'Samisdat'
The articles in the neo-Nazi publication Brisant did not carry by-lines. Intrigued and unsettled by the strange information they contained, W. A. Harbinson embarked on a little detective work, checking the origins of the magazine and discovering that it had been published in West Germany by a company that had since disappeared, Lintec GmbH of Hamburg.

 

According to Harbinson, the 'company was not listed with any of the West German press organizations, nor with any public relations bureau'. ⁽³⁹⁾

 

Nevertheless, he realized that the information contained in the Brisant articles had been culled from two books:

• UFOs. Nazi Secret Weapons? by Mattern Friedrich

• Secret Nazi Polar Expeditions by Christof Friedrich

Both books were published by a company called Samisdat Publishers Limited of Toronto, Canada.

As Harbinson notes, 'Mattern Friedrich' and 'Christof Friedrich' are actually pseudonyms for Ernst Zundel, a Canadian resident but German citizen and one of the most outspoken and active of those who deny that the Holocaust occurred.

 

Through his many apparent links with surviving Nazis in South America and elsewhere, Zundel,

'now runs Samisdat Publishers Limited as a mouthpiece of neo-Nazi propaganda and commercial enterprise, specializing in the sale of Nazi books, record albums, tape recordings, photographs, medals and other Nazi memorabilia'. ⁽⁴⁰⁾

Zundel maintains in his books that UFOs are actually Nazi secret weapons, launched from their hidden base at or near the South Pole.

 

He also is an advocate (apparently) of the Hollow Earth Theory, and in his Samisdat newsletter in 1978 advertised an expedition by chartered jet to the South Pole where, he claimed, the passengers would discover not only Hitler's Antarctic UFO base but also the entrance to the interior of the planet. A ticket for the chartered flight would cost $9,999.

The following selection from the Samisdat article will enable the reader to gain some idea of the nature of Zundel's claims:

ACHTUNG!

SAMISDAT NEWS BULLETIN SAMISDAT

HOLLOW EARTH EXPEDITION $9999.00

IN SEARCH OF HOLES IN THE POLES

SEARCH FOR HITLER'S ANTARCTIC U.F.O. BASES ...

 

Your response to our most recent mailout and activities has been most encouraging!

 

We have received orders and enquiries from as far away as Noumea in the South Pacific, Easter Island, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, Soviet Satellite countries, China, South Africa, Persia, the Congo, Australia, Japan, as well as from every country in Western Europe and almost every state in the U.S.A. Not only is this response extensive, it is massive - a clear indication on the part of knowledgeable UFO researchers and members of the public that they are tired of the 'Junk food' being served up by old-line UFO groups and publications who expound the official CIA-KGB alibi that all UFOs are extraterrestrial.

 

What the UFO-watching world wants now is the real meat of the matter - a serious investigation of UFOs whose origins are terrestrial.

SAMISDAT is the only organization making such an effort, but we are not alone, for we have thousands of supporters like yourself who want to know the truth which the saucer-charlatans have for 30 years tried to cover up with fairy-tale fantasies of 'little green men'.

 

It is people like yourself who have made SAMISDAT the most active UFO Organization and publisher on Planet Earth! ...

Our discoveries have led us into the production of a number of currently suppressed and sometimes vilified books which are now underground bestsellers. "UFOs -NAZI SECRET WEAPON?" was our first title, now sold out in 5 complete editions. Our second book, "SECRET NAZI POLAR EXPEDITIONS", is coming up fast and has sold out 2 full editions. Foreign-language translations of these books are selling briskly, and it is becoming obvious to everyone that the media-enforced blockade of the truth has now been broken.

 

Three additional books are currently under production and these will round out our Phase I Publishing Program: "THE CIA-KGB-UFO COVER-UP", "THE ANTARCTICA THEORY" and "THE LAST BATTALION".

We have also been able to establish research teams in Canada, the U.S.A. and in particular, Germany, whose task it is to rediscover basic wingless flight which brought the original Nazi UFOs into being. Already, these teams have designed and constructed small scale models, some using conventional power and others which have propulsion systems unprecedented in today's aerospace technology. With additional research, we hope to make available several different models in kit form for hobby-builders. Any contributions to these research projects, whether of ideas or money, will be very much appreciated.

 

Checks should be made out to SAMISDAT with the notation "For SAMPROJ R-l" ...

For the truly dedicated UFO researcher, SAMISDAT is embarking upon a magnificent and awe-inspiring experience! We are negotiating with several international airlines and chartered air carriers in regard to our planned investigation of the "Inner Earth Theory" coupled with our search for "Hitler's Flying Saucer Bases in Antarctica."

 

Our 'launching pad' for which we are also negotiating will be located in Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires. This site will be the gathering place for an International UFO Convention which is scheduled to take place some time in 1979 or 1980. From this convention site, those who are interested and financially able may join Christof Friedrich and members of a specially-selected SAMISDAT research team on the Antarctic Expedition who will not only search for Hitler's Saucer Bases in German Antarctica, but who will further attempt to settle the controversy about Admiral Byrd's "Flight into the Polar Opening" by actually flying over the South Pole! Our tentative flight path is here shown.

 

It is anticipated that a specially-prepared, long-range jet will be available for the Antarctic Expedition's polar flight ...

SAMISDAT's Antarctic Expedition in Search of Hitler's Flying Saucer Bases and the South Polar Opening into Inner Earth will be the unique event of a lifetime. As only a very limited number of people can be accommodated, our selection standards are of necessity rigorous. The approximate cost per person on this expedition may be as high as $9,999.00.

 

However, the cost could be reduced considerably, provided we are able to raise money from our SAMISDAT SERIES of lectures, tapes, conventions, UFO models and book sales in this interim period.

 

You can help to realize this dream of a lifetime in several ways:

1. You can become one of our book distributors by buying SAMISDAT books and other items at wholesale dealers' prices and then retailing them to friends, colleagues, UFO conventioneers, and visitors to county fairs, psychic fairs and flea markets. By purchasing SAMISDAT titles in bulk, you could easily realize almost a 100% profit on each item sold. This money you could then apply toward your share in the Expedition or use as you see fit.

2. You can organize a UFO club and hold your own UFO conventions on a profit-sharing basis with SAMISDAT.

3. You can help us find sponsors for the Expedition.

4. If you are rich and conscientious, you can underwrite the whole or part of the Expedition and realize our goal of a lifetime much, much faster. But empty promises and other hot-air products from windbags and do-nothings, however well off, will not serve to waft the Expedition to Antarctica and back. The only thing capable of doing that is cold, hard cash up front. If you've got what it takes and want to put your money to work right away, then please contact us!

5. You can set up your own fund-raising campaign for the Expedition. For details and assistance in regard to these and other ideas, do not hesitate to contact us.

These are but a few of the ways in which we can hasten that glorious day when we board our sleek, silvery aircraft and wing our way to Antarctica and beyond - to our rendezvous with history.

 

When we return, we shall have unearthed Inner Earth and/or found evidence of Hitler's UFO Bases - or we shall have gone a long way toward dispelling two of the most tenaciously persistent mysteries of our Scientific Era. ⁽⁴¹⁾

The reader will note that Zimdel's apparent intention to launch an expedition to Antarctica could only be realized if readers of Samisdat bought his products 'in bulk' (needless to say, the charter flight to the Antarctic never took place).

 

Zundel's apparently nonsensical claims regarding Nazi UFOs, secret bases at the South Pole and the Hollow Earth hide an altogether more sinister revisionist agenda.

In fact, Zundel himself has admitted as much. According to Frank Miele, a member of the Skeptics Society in the United States, who wrote an article on Holocaust revisionism for that society's magazine in 1994, Zundel told him that his book UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapons? (which became an underground bestseller, going through seven printings) was nothing more than a ploy to attract readers.

 

Said Zundel in a telephone conversation with Miele:

'I realized that North Americans were not interested in being educated. They want to be entertained. The book was for fun. With a picture of the Fuhrer on the cover and flying saucers coming out of Antarctica it was a chance to get on radio and TV talk shows. For about 15 minutes of an hour program I'd talk about that esoteric stuff. Then I would start talking about all those Jewish scientists in concentration camps, working on these secret weapons. And that was my chance to talk about what I wanted to talk about.' ⁽⁴²⁾

As one might expect (and hope), Zundel's Holocaust revisionism has landed him in hot water with the Canadian authorities. In 1984, criminal proceedings were initiated against him by the Canadian Government, based on a private complaint made by a Holocaust survivor named Sabrina Citron. Zundel was charged under Section 177 of the Criminal Code of Canada, which makes it a criminal offence to publish willfully a statement one knows is false and that causes, or is likely to cause, injury to the public interest.

 

Zundel had published two books by other authors:

• The West, War, and Islam

• Did Six Million Really Die?

He was convicted for publishing the latter title and sentenced to fifteen months in jail. The conviction, however, was overturned on appeal and a second trial was ordered.

The second trial received massive coverage in the Canadian media, with Zundel calling other leading revisionists as expert witnesses. He was again convicted, but the case was taken to the Canadian Supreme Court, which found that the statute on false statements was an unconstitutional violation of free speech. As Miele ironically remarks, Zundel the Holocaust revisionist found himself 'a civil libertarian hero of Canada'. ⁽⁴³⁾

 

Notwithstanding this, several Canadian Jewish groups have initiated proceedings against him under Canadian anti-hate laws.
 

Miguel Serrano and the Glorification of Hitler
The strange and esoteric notions that seem so often to go hand in hand with Holocaust revisionism are most strikingly exemplified by the Chilean diplomat Miguel Serrano (b. 1917), who was Ambassador to India (1953-62), Yugoslavia (1962-64) and Austria (1964-70). ⁽⁴⁴⁾

 

The possessor of a formidable intellect, Serrano wrote on a number of arcane subjects including Yoga, Tantra and other areas of mysticism, as well as a book on his friendships with Carl Jung and Hermann Hesse.

 

He also travelled widely in search of wisdom in India, South America and Antarctica. In 1984 he published a long explication of his mystical and philosophical thought, entitled Adolf Hitler, el Ultimo Avatara (Adolf Hitler, the Last Avatar), which he dedicates 'To the glory of the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler'. ⁽⁴⁵⁾

According to Godwin:

We are to understand the title quite literally: Serrano means that Hitler is the Tenth Avatar of Vishnu, the Kalki Avatar, who has incarnated to bring about the end of the Kali Yuga and usher in a New Age. In the terminology of Buddhism, Hitler is a Tulku or a Bodhisattva, who having previously emancipated himself from bondage to the circles of this world has taken on voluntary birth for the sake of mankind. Therefore he is beyond criticism. ⁽⁴⁶⁾

Serrano believes that Hitler himself is still alive, having escaped from the ruins of Berlin in one of the Nazi disc-planes, and is continuing to direct an Esoteric War from the safety of a secret realm at the South Pole. The background to this scenario involves, once again, the legendary land of Hyperborea and its fabulous inhabitants, with further variations on the theme we have already discussed (see Chapter Two).

 

According to Serrano, the Hyperboreans were originally from beyond our galaxy, arriving on Earth in remote antiquity. Their existence has been suppressed by a monumental conspiracy, which also seeks to misrepresent them as physical 'aliens'; in fact, we only perceive them as 'flying saucers' because we lack the perception to see them as they really are.

 

They founded the First Hyperborea here on Earth, a realm that was not composed of mundane matter but which extended beyond the physical plane of existence created and controlled by the Demiurge, an inferior god whose first experiments in the creation of intelligent life resulted in Neanderthal Man. ⁽⁴⁷⁾

 

The Demiurge instituted a cosmic regime by which all creatures would take the Way of the Ancestors - in other words, they would be reincarnated on Earth indefinitely. This was unacceptable to the Hyperboreans who preferred to take the Way of the Gods, only being reincarnated if they chose. The Hyperboreans possessed the power of Vril (see Chapter Three), which they wielded in their battles with the mechanistic Demiurge. ⁽⁴⁸⁾

 

The war between the Hyperboreans and the Demiurge resulted in the founding of a Second Hyperborea at the North Pole, taking the form of a physical, circular continent from which the Hyperboreans began to organize the spiritualization of the Earth. This would be achieved through the instilling of a single particle of immortality in the Neanderthals and other proto-humans, which would raise them out of their semi-animal state.

The Hyperboreans' plans seemed to be going well enough, until they made the mistake of having sexual intercourse with the creations of the Demiurge. This miscegenation was associated with a catastrophic cometary impact that caused the North and South Poles to change position.

 

From that moment on, the Earth became 'the battleground between the Demiurge and the Hyperboreans, the latter always in danger of diluting their blood'. ⁽⁴⁹⁾

 

Godwin quotes Serrano thus:

'There is nothing more mysterious than blood. Paracelsus considered it a condensation of light. I believe that the Aryan, Hyperborean blood is that - but not the light of the Golden Sun, not of a galactic sun, but of the light of the Black Sun ...', ⁽⁵⁰⁾ the Black Sun being a symbol not only of the void inside the Hollow Earth but also of the ultimate void from which all creation flows.

Serrano claims to have met a certain Master who told him that at a certain point in the practice of Yoga one is able to leave one's body and go through mystical death to reach the Black Sun, the realm occupied by the Hyperboreans beyond the physical universe. However, such a spiritual voyage is not within the capabilities of all humanity - only those 'whose blood preserves the memory of the ancient White, Hyperborean race'. ⁽⁵¹⁾

The Jewish people are seen by Serrano as the instruments of the Demiurge (whom he identifies with Jehovah). They constitute an 'anti-race' that is engaged in a gigantic conspiracy involving all the world's institutions, the undeclared enemies of Hyperborean ideals. These ideals gave rise to the Thule Society, which Serrano claims had links with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn but 'was perverted by the degeneracy of Aleister Crowley and the Jewish Bergsons'. ⁽⁵²⁾

During the earlier part of Hitler's campaigns, according to Serrano, his intention had simply been to reconquer the ancient territories of the Aryans or Hyperboreans. Rudolf Hess's flight to England in 1941 was the last stage of this effort, intended through renewed contacts with the Golden Dawn to unite Germany with her Aryan cousins, the British, and encourage them also to purify their race.

 

But after the apparent failure of this mission, Hitler took up his avataric destiny of total war on all fronts against international Jewry and the Demiurge, attacking them in their most powerful creation, the Communist Soviet Union. ⁽⁵³⁾

 

As with other revisionists, Serrano denies that the Holocaust took place (he calls it the 'Myth of the Six Million') on the grounds that the German is heroic but not cruel (cruelty being an attribute of mixed blood). Indeed, during the Second World War, the Nazis were allegedly concentrating on the perfection of 'magical realism', including the development of disc-planes, establishing contact with ascended Masters in Tibet and dematerialization.

 

Hitler himself did not commit suicide but escaped through an underground passage, designed by Albert Speer, connecting the Bunker with Tempelhof Airfield where he boarded one of the disc-planes and left the ruins of the Third Reich behind. ⁽⁵⁴⁾

As Godwin notes, quoting the Chilean writer thus, Serrano here enters realms usually identified with the bizarre fringes of ufology and cosmology:

Had the German submarines discovered at the North Pole or in John Dee's Greenland the exact point through which one penetrates, as through a black funnel, going to connect with the Other Pole, emerging in that paradisal land and sea that are no longer here, yet exist? An impregnable paradise, from which one can continue the war and win it - for when this war is lost, the other is won.

 

The Golden Age, Ultima Thule, Hyperborea, the other side of things; so easy and so difficult to attain. The inner earth, the Other Earth, the counter-earth, the astral earth, to which one passes as it were with a 'click'; a bilocation, or trilocation of space. ⁽⁵⁵⁾

Serrano believes that the Hollow Earth is still inhabited by the First Hyperboreans and that the Nazis found a way through to their realm via the South Pole, a belief shared (apparently) by the French writer Jean Robin - although it must be added that Robin is no denier of the Holocaust.

 

In 1989, Robin published his Operation Orth, which offers the account, supposedly given to Robin by a friend, of a journey to a subterranean complex made aboard a flying saucer that could pass through solid rock. The underground city was near the Chilean coastal city of Valparaiso, north of Santiago; it had a population of some 350,000, all of whom were members of the Black Order and some of whom were Jews who blamed 'their fellows for their "refusal to collaborate" with the evolutionary process'.⁽⁵⁶⁾

 

Robin's story differs from other Nazi-survival myths in that Hitler died in this new Agartha in 1953 and his body was placed in a transparent, hexagonal casket. Rather astonishingly, this casket also contained the body of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews from the concentration camps and who mysteriously disappeared at the end of the war.

 

Godwin is justifiably nonplussed by this:

Operation Orth poses every manner of problem ... to the reader, who can only wonder what prompted Jean Robin to present the shocking images of Hitler and Wallenberg reconciled, and the casual dismissal of the Holocaust by the Jews of the Black Order.

 

In the context of Guenonian attitudes, which are nothing if not respectful of the Jewish people and their tradition, there is nothing to be said, unless it be that Robin actually accepts his friend's account, and is warning us of the [evolutionary process's] final obscenity. ⁽⁵⁷⁾
 

Alternative 3
Anyone familiar with the above phrase will surely be wondering what possible significance it can have to the present study.

 

I have decided to discuss it for two reasons: firstly, the terrifying conspiracy-to-end-all-conspiracies known as 'Alternative 3' has been implicated by more than one writer in the ongoing saga of ultra-secret Nazi activities; and secondly because, since Alternative 3 was actually nothing more than a cleverly engineered hoax, it offers us a salutary lesson in how the public can be manipulated by fantasy and propaganda masquerading as fact.

 

Since many readers may be unfamiliar with Alternative 3, we must review its principal elements before turning our attention to the Nazi connection and the reasons why, even today, it is still believed by many to be essentially true.

The tale begins on 20 June 1977, when the UK Independent Television Company Anglia transmitted a documentary program (below video) in its highly regarded Science Report series.

 

 

The program was entitled Alternative 3, and the British TV guide TV Times had this to say about it:

'What this program shows may be considered unethical, but this film is transmitted ... as a challenge to those who know the answers to the questions raised to tell the truth.' ⁽⁵⁸⁾

The program finished at 10p.m., and from then until midnight and throughout the following day Anglia Television was swamped with telephone calls (10,000, according to one estimate), some from people who had enjoyed the program and wanted to know if there was any truth in it but many from viewers who were genuinely frightened by its 'revelations' and who wanted to know what was being done about them.

 

Anglia hastily issued a statement assuring its viewers that Alternative 3 had, in fact, originally been meant as an April Fool's Day joke - as evidenced by the closing credits, which included the copyright caption: 'Anglia Television - April 1, 1977'.

Shortly before the transmission, Anglia had issued a press release, stating:

A team of journalists investigating, among other topical subjects, the drought of 1976, and the changes in the world's atmospheric conditions, and also a disturbing rise in the statistics of disappearing people, follow a trail of information and scientific research through England and America.

A Cambridge scientist and an ex-astronaut living in unpublicized retirement following a nervous breakdown, are among the links in their investigations, which come together finally in some strange discoveries about the future of life on Earth and elsewhere in the Solar System.

As a result of our private screenings a few weeks ago, this program has been acquired for simultaneous transmission in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Denmark and Iceland and will be seen eventually in the majority of European and Asian markets.

The program's theme may seem extraordinary, but it is scientifically possible. The question is, how far does it mirror the truth?

On the day of the transmission, journalist Kenneth Hughes, who had gained access to some of the material to be presented, wrote an article in the London Daily Mirror entitled 'WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON?'

A science program is likely to keep millions of Britons glued to their armchairs.

ALTERNATIVE 3 ... is an investigation into the disappearance of several scientists.

They seem simply to have vanished from the face of the Earth.

Chilling news is read by former ITV newscaster Simon Butler who gives a gloomy report on the future.

The program will be screened in several other countries - but not in America. Network bosses there want to assess its effect on British viewers.

The program's structure centered on a series of interviews with one Dr Carl Gerstein, who described the hideous nature of Alternative 3. Dr Gerstein claimed to have attended a secret conference in Huntsville, Alabama in 1957, at which it was agreed that industrial pollution and the accompanying greenhouse effect (caused by high levels of carbon dioxide trapping heat within the atmosphere) was destroying the Earth's biosphere, and that the decline in air quality was irreversible, so that by the year 2000 the Earth would undergo a complete environmental collapse, wiping out most life (including humanity).

Three alternatives for survival were suggested.

 

Alternative 1 called for the deployment of a large number of nuclear bombs in the upper atmosphere. It was suggested that their detonation would blow holes in the carbon dioxide envelope, allowing the excess heat in the atmosphere to escape into space. This idea was rejected on the grounds that it would have replaced one problem with another - a massive amount of radiation in the atmosphere.

 

Gerstein's description of Alternative 2 takes us right back to the subterranean realms discussed in Chapter Seven.

 

In the book version of Alternative 3, Gerstein is quoted thus:

'Alternative 2, in my view, was even crazier than Alternative 1. I recognize, of course, that there is enough atmosphere locked in the soil to support life but ... no, this was the most unrealistic of all the alternatives.

'There is good reason to believe that this world was once more civilized and far more scientifically advanced than it is today. Our really distant ancestors, living millennia before what we call Prehistoric Man, had progressed far beyond our present state of knowledge.

'Then, it is argued, there was some cataclysmic disaster - maybe one comparable with that facing us now - and these highly sophisticated people built completely new civilizations deep beneath the surface of the earth ...

'There is evidence, quite considerable evidence, to suggest that there were once whole cities - linked by an elaborate complex of tunnels - far below the surface. Remains of them have been found under many parts of the world. Under South America ... China ... Russia ... oh, all over the place. And in this subterranean world, so it is said, there is a green luminescence which replaces the sun as a source of energy - and which makes it possible for crops to be grown ...

'Maybe there's some historical truth in the Biblical story of the great Flood. Maybe the disaster which drove them there in the first place was followed by the Flood - and they were all trapped and drowned down there. Maybe that's how their civilizations ended ...

'And it could follow that the people we think of as prehistoric Men were merely the descendants of a handful of survivors - the real children of Noah, if you accept the Bible version - who had to start from scratch in a world which had been utterly devastated. Is that why they took so naturally - instinctively, if you like -to living in caves? Then the agonizingly slow process of rebuilding the world started all over again until now we find ourselves in a similar position ...' ⁽⁵⁹⁾

Thus, Alternative 2 called for the evacuation of the world's elites (the rest would have to take their chances on the surface) into these abandoned cities. However, this alternative was also discarded, since the heat from the greenhouse effect would eventually permeate down through the Earth's crust, making life equally impossible for those living underground.

The only option left was Alternative 3, which called for the evacuation (of the elites, once again) from Earth to Mars. Gerstein reiterated the theory that the Red Planet was once inhabited, and that its atmosphere might still be locked away in the soil. He added that in 1959 a Russian rocket had exploded on the launch pad, killing a large number of people and devastating the surrounding area.

 

The implication was that the rocket had been carrying a nuclear device whose detonation would have unlocked the atmosphere on Mars and transformed it into a habitable planet once again. Gerstein went on to suggest that another rocket might have been sent to Mars, and that this mission might have been successful.

The Alternative 3 program also contained some footage of an alleged top secret unmanned mission to Mars, undertaken by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962.

 

 

The film showed the rocky landscape of Mars, seen from the approaching probe, accompanied by Russian and American voices.

 

Near the end of the footage, an American voice said:

'That's it! We got it ... we got it! Boy, if they ever take the wraps off this thing, it's going to be the biggest date in history! May 22, 1962. We're on the planet Mars - and we have air!'

The presenter of the program, Tim Brinton, commented that there must have been a very good reason why the true conditions on Mars were kept from the public, and why the mission had been jointly undertaken by the US and the USSR. The implication was of an ultra-secret interplanetary project which, Brinton claimed, could well be Gerstein's Alternative 3. ⁽⁶⁰⁾

 

By way of corroborative 'evidence', the makers of Alternative 3 pointed to the large numbers of people who go missing throughout the world each year, suggesting that many are actually being abducted by the Alternative 3 controllers and transformed, through surgical and chemical means, into mindless slave labourers who are then transported as 'Batch Consignments' to the colony on Mars.

 

These hapless victims are referred to as 'superfluous people' by the controllers, who see their barbaric treatment as perfectly acceptable.

The controllers were also interested in recruiting scientists and academics from a wide range of disciplines. These personnel were called 'Designated Movers', and apparently accounted for the so-called 'brain drain' of the 1960s and 1970s whereby many scientists left Britain, ostensibly to take up better-paid posts overseas. (It was claimed that an investigation of the brain drain had been the original impetus behind the Science Report program.)

 

The entire operation was headquartered in Geneva and was also controlled, in typical James Bond fashion, by a fleet of nuclear submarines stationed underneath the North Polar ice cap. Here the controllers ensured the conspiracy's continued secrecy by arranging 'hot jobs' (remote-controlled spontaneous human combustion) for those investigators who got too close to the truth.

The ingenious makers of Alternative 3 also brought in the NASA Moon flights as more evidence of the conspiracy. The reader may be aware that the Apollo program is a firm favorite of conspiratologists, some of whom maintain that NASA is hiding the discovery of derelict alien cities on the Moon, while others claim that all of the Moon landings were actually hoaxed, with the astronauts bouncing around a sound stage somewhere in Nevada or California.

 

In Alternative 3, it was suggested that the Apollo astronauts did not stumble upon a derelict alien city but a fully functioning man-made way station for flights en route to the Martian colony.

 

The following transcript of a conversation between Mission Control in Houston, Texas and an astronaut named Bob Grodin was presented in the book:

MISSION CONTROL: Could you take a look out over that flat area there? Do you see anything beyond?
GRODIN: There's a kind of a ridge with a pretty spectacular ... oh, my God! What is that there? That's all I want to know! What the hell is that?
MISSION CONTROL: Roger. Interesting. Go Tango ... immediately ... go Tango ...
GRODIN: There's a kind of a light now ...
MISSION CONTROL (hurriedly): Roger. We've got it, we've marked it. Lose a little communication, huh? Bravo Tango ... Bravo Tango ... select Jezebel, Jezebel...
GRODIN: Yeah ... yeah ... but this is unbelievable ... recorder off ... ⁽⁶¹⁾

Another transcript, this time between astronauts Scott and Irwin and Mission Control during their Moonwalk in August 1971, runs thus:

SCOTT: Arrowhead really runs east to west.
MISSION CONTROL: Roger, we copy.
IRWIN: Tracks here as we go down slope.
MISSION CONTROL: Just follow the tracks, huh?
IRWIN: Right ... we're (garble) ... we know that's a fairly good run. We're bearing 320, hitting range for 413 ... I can't get over those lineations, that layering on Mount Hadley.
SCOTT: I can't either. That's really spectacular.
IRWIN: They sure look beautiful.
SCOTT: Talk about organization!
IRWIN: That's the most organized structure I've ever seen!
SCOTT: It's (garble) ... so uniform in width . . .
IRWIN: Nothing we've seen before this has shown such uniform thickness from the top of the tracks to the bottom. ⁽⁶²⁾

The book version of Alternative 3 also contains an episode described by an inside source calling himself 'Trojan'.

 

The events occurred in a base inside the crater Archimedes, which lies on the western border of the Mare Imbrium. The Archimedes Base is allegedly a large transit camp beneath a hermetically sealed transparent dome. Here one of the Designated Movers, a marine biologist named Matt Anderson, secretly visited a segregated area where the Batch Consignments of slaves were housed. In this slave village, Anderson encountered a childhood friend.

 

Having yet to undergo the psychological conditioning that enabled the Designated Movers to accept the concept of slavery, Anderson was appalled and decided to escape with as many slaves as possible and expose the horror of Alternative 3.

Teaming up with a NASA-trained aerospace technician named Cowers, Anderson managed to get 84 slaves aboard a Moon ship and headed for one of the gigantic airlocks in the dome. However, a technician in the main control room saw what was happening and raised the alarm. The airlock was sealed shut and Gowers, who was flying the ship, panicked and lost control, sending it crashing into the dome.

 

The resulting explosion tore a hole in the protective shell and the resultant cataclysmic depressurization killed almost everyone at the base. As a result of this disaster, an earlier base in the crater Cassini was redeveloped, and Alternative 3 is going ahead as planned.

As mentioned, the huge number of telephone calls from concerned viewers resulted in a speedy statement from Anglia Television that Alternative 3 had been an April Fool's Day jape and nothing more. Indeed, the participation of several quite well-known actors (one of whom appeared in a dog food commercial before the beginning of the program!) could mean little else.

 

In spite of this, Alternative 3 has taken on a life of its own, offering a kind of template for the suspicions of other writers and conspiracy researchers.

Most notable among these is the American conspiratologist Jim Keith (who sadly died in September 1999). In his Casebook on Alternative 3 (1994), he lists more than 30 scientists connected with the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) 'Star Wars' anti-missile project who either committed suicide, disappeared or otherwise died in mysterious circumstances.

 

This parallel with the missing scientists in the Alternative 3 scenario is an example of Keith's case as presented in his book. When the conspiracy is examined closely, its principal elements become recognizable aspects of other conspiracy theories. It is as if the creators of the Anglia Television program had pre-empted the protagonists of Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum, in which a small group of bored intellectuals working for a publisher of esoteric texts take all the information they can find on secret societies and historical conspiracies, and feed it into a computer nicknamed 'Abulafia' (after the Cabalist).

 

The computer then links all of the snippets it has been given into a cogent and internally consistent (although completely fictitious) scenario in which all the secret societies in history have handed down to each other the elements of a fantastic Secret that will give the holder incredible power.

 

Through indiscretion, word of the protagonists' discovery spreads through the international network of contemporary secret occult groups, who then hound the intellectuals (literally) to death, thinking that they have the Secret.

 

The book's hero, Casaubon, meets his death at the hands of occultists who wish the Secret to remain a secret.

With Alternative 3, we can see a similar process at work.

 

The basic template of a secret power elite making plans to abandon a dying Earth and colonize Mars offers the basis for a wider and more elaborate scenario. It begins with the rise of human civilization, which from its very inception contained the roots of a powerful and totally unscrupulous elite that has secretly directed the course of history for thousands of years. In the twentieth century (with which we are primarily concerned in this chapter), the most extreme and barbaric example of this power elite at work was Nazi ideology.

Jim Keith makes the interesting point that Hitler himself conceived of four 'alternatives' to deal with the coming world of scarcity that he envisaged. In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote:

A clear examination of the premises for foreign activity on the part of German statecraft inevitably led to the following conviction:

Germany has an annual increase in population of nearly nine hundred thousand souls. The difficulty of feeding this army of new citizens must grow greater from year to year and ultimately end in catastrophe, unless ways and means are found to forestall the danger of starvation and misery in time.

There were four ways of avoiding so terrible a development for the future:

1. Following the French example, the increase of births could be artificially restricted, thus meeting the problem of over-population ...

2. A second way would be one which today we, time and time again, see proposed and recommended: internal colonization ...

3. Either new soil could be acquired and the superfluous millions sent off each year, thus keeping the nation on a self-sustaining basis; or we could

4. Produce for foreign needs through industry and commerce, and defray the cost of living from the proceeds. ⁽⁶³⁾

Hitler rejected the first of these options on the grounds that the self-limitation of a population through birth control would necessarily result in a weakening of that population, since the natural laws of Darwinian survival of the fittest would be circumvented.

'For as soon as procreation as such is limited and the number of births diminished, the natural struggle for existence which leaves only the strongest and healthiest alive is obviously replaced by the obvious desire to 'save' even the weakest and most sickly at any price, and this plants the seed of a future generation which must inevitably grow more and more deplorable the longer this mockery of Nature and her will continues.' ⁽⁶⁴⁾

The second option - of 'internal colonization' and the increase of resource-yield within Germany - he rejected on the grounds that it could not be sustained indefinitely:

'Without doubt the productivity of the soil can be increased up to a certain limit. But only up to a certain limit, and not continuously without end. For a certain time it will be possible to compensate for the increase of the German people without having to think of hunger, by increasing the productivity of our soil. But beside this, we must face the fact that our demands on life ordinarily rise even more rapidly than the number of the population.' ⁽⁶⁵⁾

The third option refers, of course, to the concept of Lebensraum:

The acquisition of new soil for the settlement of the excess population possesses an infinite number of advantages, particularly if we turn from the present to the future. ... We must ... coolly and objectively adopt the standpoint that it can certainly not be the intention of Heaven to give one people fifty times as much land and soil in this world as another. In this case we must not let political boundaries obscure for us the boundaries of eternal justice. If this earth really has room for all to live in, let us be given the soil we need for our livelihood.

True, they will not willingly do this. But then the law of self-preservation goes into effect; and what is refused to amicable methods, it is up to the fist to take. ⁽⁶⁶⁾

The fourth option, which relied on German interdependence with other nations through international commerce, Hitler rejected on the grounds that the survival of the Aryan race would necessarily depend on the activities of other nation states:

If ... Germany took this road, she should at least have clearly recognized that this development would some day ... end in struggle. Only children could have thought that they could get their bananas in the 'peaceful contest of nations', by friendly and moral conduct and constant emphasis on their peaceful intentions, as they so high-soundingly and unctuously babbled; in other words, without ever having to take up arms. ⁽⁶⁷⁾

Having made the interesting but rather tenuous connection between Hitler's alternatives and the possible options stated in Alternative 3 (the former referring to Hitler's perception of the problems facing the German people; the latter referring to the problems facing humanity as a whole), Keith then quotes a passage from Mein Kampf in which Hitler writes:

[T]he folkish philosophy finds the importance of mankind in its basic racial elements. In the state it sees on principle only a means to an end and construes its end as the preservation of the racial existence of man. ... And so the folkish philosophy of life corresponds to the innermost will of Nature, since it restores that free play of forces which must lead to a continuous mutual higher breeding, until at last the best of humanity, having achieved possession of this earth, will have a free path for activity in domains which will he partly above it and partly outside it. ⁽⁶⁸⁾

Keith considers it highly significant that Hitler should have mentioned domains lying above and outside the Earth, in view of the events following the defeat of the Third Reich.

 

He continues:

Summing up ideas that seem to add up to ... Alternative 3, we are familiar with the advanced disk aircraft designs perfected by the Nazis during World War II, and also know that the American space program was run by prominent Nazis, or at least ex-Nazis.

 

Nazi interests have also been entwined, since the emergence of the philosophy, with other totalitarian control mechanisms of the world, with the intelligence, police, and psychiatric establishments, with eugenics and genetic research, as well as with the plans of monied elites whose philosophies might better be defined in parapolitical, rather than political terms. ⁽⁶⁹⁾

We have already examined the theory of German flying discs in Chapter Eight, and noted at the beginning of this chapter that many prominent Nazis were transferred to the United States at the end of the war, under Project PAPERCLIP - including Wernher von Braun, who designed much of the hardware for NASA's Apollo program.

 

With regard to the continuation of Nazi objectives in the post-war years, mentioned earlier in this chapter, Keith offers the following quote from the Research and Analysis branch of the OSS from 1945:

The Nazi regime in Germany has developed well-arranged plans for the perpetuation of Nazi doctrines after the war. Some of these plans have already been put into operation and others are ready to be launched on a widespread scale immediately upon termination of hostilities in Europe . . . Nazi party members, German industrialists and the German military, realizing that victory can no longer be attained, are now developing post-war commercial projects, endeavoring to renew and cement friendships in foreign commercial circles and planning for renewals of pre-war cartel agreements.

 

German technicians, cultural experts and undercover agents have well-laid plans to infiltrate into foreign countries with the object of developing economic, cultural and political ties. German technicians and scientific research experts will be made available at low cost to industrial firms and technical schools in foreign countries. German capital and plans for the construction of ultra-modern technical schools and research laboratories will be offered at extremely favorable terms since they will afford the Germans an excellent opportunity to design and perfect new weapons. ⁽⁷⁰⁾

For conspiratologists such as Keith, the fabric of Alternative 3 can be unwoven to reveal its component strands, all of which seem to be supported by evidence of varying quality.

 

As Keith himself states:

'One of the difficulties in researching Alternative 3 was that the evidence kept leading me in a direction I wasn't particularly happy to go in: toward the Nazis. ... A possibility, which I admit is wild speculation, yet at the same time comprises a startling alignment of facts, is that Alternative 3 is an expression of Nazi occult doctrine and that there is a long term elitist program to abandon Earth and to implement another step in Hitler's "Final Solution".' ⁽⁷¹⁾

The component strands of Keith's vision of Alternative 3 can be summarized as follows: Towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazis developed radical aircraft designs, including the Foo Fighters and larger, manned flying discs. The plans for these machines, along with a number of components and scientific personnel, were transferred to a hidden colony in Neu Schwabenland, Antarctica in the closing stages of the war.

 

The two operations known as 'Eagle Flight' and 'Paperclip' ensured that Nazi financial interests and espionage respectively were maintained after the war's end. Given that colonies of Nazis continue to exist in Antarctica and South America, it is probable that their own aerospace research has continued unabated, to the point where they have made manned spaceflight safe and routine.

 

The discovery that life on Earth is doomed as a result of pollution and overpopulation led to the formulation of Alternative 3, whereby the monied elites of the world would effectively jump ship and establish a human colony on Mars. Far from being mortal enemies, the United States and the Soviet Union were actually the closest of allies: the Cold War was a monumental con on the rest of humanity, which unwittingly supplied the slave labour required for the gigantic construction projects.

 

The Nazi survivors, one of the main players in this scenario of secret world history, saw this as a perfect opportunity to continue with the creation of a master race, with their Lebensraum relocated to Mars.

 

Keith continues:

My belief is that the Nazis have been major, but far from the only players in the game of world domination since the end of World War II: one among many heads of the Hydra. Influential Nazis (possibly including Hitler) have been behind the scenes since the end of the war, creating and implementing schemes for the ultimate triumph of Die Neuordnung [New Order].

 

Almost all of Hitler's cohorts survived Nuremberg and may have been involved in manipulations including international terrorism and the establishment of drug and arms markets, as well as in collaboration with other more 'respectable' networks of world influence.

While I cannot state with certainty that Nazis are creating the 'real' domination of Alternative 3, that they have constructed or are constructing bases on Mars or the moon to carry the ancient Grail of Aryan racial purity away from what they conceive as a cataclysm-doomed Earth, I do have to wonder at the logic and symmetry of detail. ⁽⁷²⁾

The complex, interconnected system of rumors-paranormal, historical and political - that has grown up around Alternative 3 is perhaps the most extreme expression of the postwar Nazi-survival idea.

 

Indeed, its very extremeness provides a perfect example of the way in which seemingly unconnected mysteries, truths and half-truths can take on an independent life that quickly rages beyond control, spawning fantastically baroque conspiracy theories that bear scant resemblance to the components from which they arose.
 

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