Deeper Space: Episode 4
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
Dark Alliance
Prominent German scientists came to America to bolster a burgeoning military industrial complex. But mistakes are made and secrets leak in the most unexpected of ways. New organizations create cover stories and discredit reliable witnesses and secret testing of UFOs with human pilots continue.
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?
Nazi UFO Technology: Foo Fighters Exposed
The Germans were on a quest for power. How powerful were they? Learn about Nazi space program, the Nazi Antarctic base and other WWII era mysteries.
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?
SECRET SPACE PROGRAM GLOSSARY
The Secret Space Program is shrouded in mystery, but information from government whistleblowers, intelligence operatives and former astronauts has been surfacing for decades. Here are the key terms, events and people you should know about.
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.
The 1952 Washington, D.C., UFO Incident, Explained
UFOs over the White House and Washington, D.C., were reported in July of 1952. What happened, and why? How did the government respond?
STUDYING THE SYMBOLS THAT SURROUND US
In the words of Olav Phillips, “as humans we label things . . . we name our cities, streets, and just about anything. We do this a lot for reasons but those markings are significant and in a military or governmental sense are required to designate things like squadrons, purposes, and home bases.”
Symbols, Icons, and ancient imagery surround our everyday lives. Symbols appear in our homes, our offices, our public buildings, and our online universe often have a deeper historical meaning. Look around your environment and discover when and where these symbols appear. Do your own research into their origins, and reflect on their meaning. Are they alchemical, are they religious, are they Esoteric, or are they Ancient? Consciously or unconsciously, these signifiers anchor us in our place in history, in the world, and in the greater universe.
About the Author
Japan's Space Elevator Expected to Be Built By 2050
In 1979, famed science fiction author, Arthur C. Clarke, wrote a book titled The Fountains of Paradise, in which a future society builds an elevator to space from a tiny island on the equator. Now, Clarke’s vision may soon come to fruition when a Japanese company begins work on its own space elevator.
What is a Space Elevator?
A space elevator is hypothetical for now, but Japanese construction giant, Obayashi Corporation, believes the necessary technology to build one could be ready in the next 10 to 12 years. The biggest hurdle at this point is developing a material strong enough to build cables 60,000 miles long and capable of transporting 100-ton cargo.
The elevator would essentially consist of a space station tethered between an anchor and a counterweight in Earth’s orbit. Dangling down from the station would be a series of cables made of carbon nanotubes – a real material developed 20 years ago that is stronger than steel by a factor of nearly 10. The only problem is that we haven’t quite figured out how to scale the technology. At the moment, we’ve only been able to create a few-centimeter-long stretch of them.
Once those tubes are scaled, which Obayashi believes will happen by 2030, an anchor would be built on Earth somewhere along the equator that would attach to the space station and a counterweight further up. The station would reside in what’s called Clarke orbit, or geostationary orbit, named after the sci-fi author himself. In this scenario, an object remains in orbit over a single point on the equator, an obvious necessity for a space elevator to be feasible.
Obayashi’s concept
The elevator cabin itself would ascend at about 120 miles per hour and carry a maximum capacity of about 30 people. For propulsion, it might be powered by a laser shot up from Earth that would supply it with the energy needed to climb the cables.
The trip would take about a week and function as a platform for scientific research, a launch point for space travel, and a mode of space tourism. The elevator could cut the cost of transporting materials into orbit by a factor of 100, which could propel space programs and colonization efforts at an astounding rate.
One man who has devoted his life to studying the viability of space elevators is Michael Lane, and he’s raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter to work on models and prototypes. Laine wants to first build a space elevator on the moon, because a weaker material could be used for the cables, like Kevlar.
On the moon there’s little gravity and no ice or wind, presenting ideal conditions for an elevator. Also the setup would only require roughly the strength of a strong man to hold the system in place. Laine’s idea proposes that rare earth elements could be harvested and brought back to earth, creating a booming space mining operation.
Is the Space Elevator Possible?
The Obayashi Corporation believes it can have the space elevator functioning by 2050 if carbon nanotubes become scalable by 2030. The company says that it holds competitions among university students to encourage them to study and advance the technology. Although over the past several years, advancements in AI like ARES (Autonomous Research System), allow scientists to let robots conduct, analyze and test hundreds of experiments autonomously, adding to the chance that nanotubes will be scaled within Obayashi’s timeline.
Obayashi is a massive construction and development firm in Tokyo that is responsible for a number of large scale engineering feats across the world. One structure designed by the company, the TOKYO SKYTREE, is the largest free-standing tower in the world, at just over 2,000 feet.
According to the company’s plan, there will be a series of anchors to counterbalance the elevator. The space station that would serve as the final destination would be situated at about 22,000 miles above Earth. Further out would be the anchor at an altitude of about 60,000 miles. Before the primary station there would be additional hubs at altitudes where one could experience the level of gravity on the moon and on Mars, which would be ideal for conducting experiments for future missions.
Not everyone believes that a space elevator will be built as easily as Obayashi does. Elon Musk has scoffed at the idea, saying that until someone builds a structure made of carbon nanotubes longer than a footbridge, he won’t consider the possibility of a space elevator. Musk also says he believes that until we have a carbon nanotube trans-oceanic bridge, say between LA and Tokyo, we shouldn’t be talking about building space elevators.
A trans-oceanic bridge seems rather silly though, considering we have the ability to fly across oceans in a much more efficient manner. Why would anyone want to spend days driving from LA to Tokyo when they could fly? Even bullet trains aren’t fast enough for a transoceanic bridge to be meaningful.
But no major technological feat has ever occurred without its detractors and naysayers who claim these visions to be impossible or impractical. Maybe Musk is right and rockets or alternative jet propulsion will reign supreme over space elevators, but Obayashi plans on continuing its lofty aspiration, with others following suit. Will Arthur C. Clarke’s vision one day come to be realized?
