The rumour about alleged saucer-shaped Nazi "Wunderwaffen“ or miracle weapons arose around 1950, a few years after the flying saucers appeared, first in Germany and then primarily in the United States and Italy. From the beginning, the claim was part of "revanchist narratives".
Recently there has been an explosion in the number of books about the myth of the Nazi saucers, from the more popular (S. D. Tucker) to more technical works (Gerhard Wiechmann)
Now Maurizio Verga joins this series with a book that draws on his decades of research.
The Italian UFO researcher has been researching this special rumour for years, and now the first (!) volume of his results has been published. Another one, which will pick up the thread after 1960, is expected to follow in a few years.
The book, at 316 pages in a large format, is bursting at the seams with detail over detail. With its wealth of information, it is more like an entire encyclopaedia than a usual non-fiction book. However, the book is easy to access through an index – and has what it takes to become the classic work on the topic.
Around 20 chapters each deal with a person who was involved in the formulation of the myth; each of these chapters is followed by a recap, a summary that often extends over 5 pages alone. Verga knows and treats every facet of the story in detail – for example, an entire chapter is devoted to Hitler’s alleged escape to South America.
Because the book contains so much information, I will try to do its scope justice with a brief summary of the contents:
Foo Fighter and secret weapons / ghost rockets / first claims in Brazil in 1948 by Josef Jacob Johannes Starziczny / first German press articles: Weser Kurier on March 10, 1950 and Der Spiegel on March 30, 1950 / Giuseppe Belluzzo / refutation by Hermann Oberth / Rudolf Schriever, whose claims are reprinted worldwide / Meier / Schriever disk shortly before as a SF concept in Italian daily newspapers, also based on Mallorca photo 1950 / Ambassador Taylor claims saucers as an American invention / several Italian inventors of flying saucers / the alleged UFO inventor Kurt Schnittke / Carl Wagner / Lino Saglioni / Kosinsky and the Nazi Antarctic base (direct route to the neo-Nazi activist Zündel in Canada) / Renato Moretti and Professor Albert Scholz / Alexander George Weygers’ saucers from the 1920s / Harold T. Frendt’s invention / the Austrians Erich Meindl and Doblhoff's saucers / Georg Sautier and Klein’s inventions / the alleged UFO incident in Schweinfurt in World War II (this hoax story was based on a German SF novel and made it into the Majestic 12 documents. The illustrations were copied from a US SF magazine) / the French inventor Robert Esnault-Pelterie / Hamburger Echo: Saucers built in 1942 / the inventor Camille Mansour Shakour / Conclusion.
This brief summary alone shows how thoroughly Verga worked. Even I had never heard of more than half of the alleged Nazi saucer inventors.
In conclusion, Verga stresses that none of the claims can be substantiated by real documents. They are all claims without evidence, and with fake construction plans that often copy older SF illustrations. Verga clearly traces how the legend came about – through the interaction of German, Italian, American and British media, which simply copied from each other without checking.
"Flying Saucers from Naziland" is a 316 pages, large format (A4) paperback. There are two long appendices (one about the alleged German atomic bomb, one about Andreas Epp), 692 footnotes, a bibliography and an index. It's available from Amazon.
Highly recommended!
Tucker, S. D.: NaziUFOs: The Legends and Myths of Hitler’s Flying Saucers in WW 2. Pen & Sword, 2023
Tucker, S. D.: The Saucer and the Swastika: The Dark Myth of Nazi UFOs. Amberley, 2023
Wiechmann, Gerhard: Von der deutschen Flugscheibe zum Nazi-UFO. Paderborn: Schönigh, 2022
