S. D. Tucker provides an illuminating account of the development of the myth that Hitler built flying saucers

📚 Finished reading Nazi UFOs by S D Tucker.

I was quite into UFOs when I was younger. The books, the magazines, the audio recordings of military airbases chatter about weird things in the sky, I had it all. I was the biggest X-Files fan. In short, like Mulder:

However I somehow had not come across the connection with Nazis, a group whom, of course I was very much not a fan. But it turns out there is one. It’s a common belief within a small niche of UFO advocates that all these strange objects in the sky, especially around the end of the World War II, where in fact sci-fi level weapons the Nazis had secretly developed after their (real) V1 and V2 missile’s success. Maybe Hitler isn’t actually dead, having escaped in one.

Whether they were of wholly human or alien origin, well, both stories have been told. Of course there’s roughly no convincing evidence for any of these conspiracy theories. And it certainly didn’t help them win the war.

After researching the people and documentation involved, the author of this book however has absolutely no truck with any of these ideas.

He follows the evolution of flying saucer (and other shapes of craft) stories, focusing on those being told soon after the World War II. Details of the supposed anti-gravity engines, alien technology and limitless infinite energy sources abound. Several humans come forward claiming to have been involved in building these things, albeit third parties might allege that these folk might have felt that making up the fiction that they knew exclusive Nazi secrets would make them much more likely to be allowed to escape unpunished to an Allied country such as the US, or “paperclipped” to use the vernacular of the book.

Another aspect of the book is more around the culture and psychology of this movement. He doesn’t seem to doubt that, whilst those who claim to have invented Nazi UFOs are invariably massive liars, some people have seen some strange and inexplicable things in the sky are reporting their experience with veracity. It’s happened for centuries, millennia probably, although in the past such sightings were more likely to be considered ball lightening or similar natural (or I suppose religious?) phenomena rather than alien UFOs.

But after certain specific flying-saucer stories were repeated time and time again, fictional films came out depicting them, sci-fi was written about them, the general idea of these specific spacecraft entered our culture - and suddenly people were claiming sightings of these specific types of alien-technology craft. Sometimes they even retrospectively changed their earlier reports to fit this pattern, although given some claims involve the idea that Nazi UFOs can time travel, I suppose that theory is not always entirely illogical within itself. But it is impossible, in the views of the author, and, I assume anyone who has deeply looked into the rather lacking evidence.

The writing style is quite humorous, sarcastic; very dry & cutting. The first story it features is that of William Henry Johnson who, starting 1946, an African-American gentlemen who sent people scam letters claiming that he was Hitler, aka Furrier (sic) number 1, (or occasionally Eva Braun) and plotting a comeback from his home in the US. And if you sent him at least $10 towards the effort then you’d be entitled to be his second in command and live in a palace once he’d used his secret technology, including invisible spaceships, to take over the world. A surprising amount of people (above 0) fell for it.

So don’t come to the book expecting a dispassionate tone. But it sure taught me plenty about the conspiratorial mythology of something I wasn’t overly aware of before, that some folk Nazis flew around in flying saucers to fly around in. I guess with billions of humans out there there’s someone that believes any given claim - and it is, after all, hard to prove a negative.