Claims have also been made that Nazi Occult societies were involved in the development of such unconventional saucer craft. One such, the ‘Vril Society’ was allegedly ‘channelling’ messages from an alien civilisation in the Aldebaran solar system and planned to develop a craft that could make physical contact with the civilisation there. This may or may not be true; but there was certainly a high level of occult activity in mid-Europe at that time, and no doubt organisations did exist then with unconventional beliefs just as they do today. Whatever the truth of this, by 1934 the Vril Society had apparently developed its first UFO shaped aircraft, known as the Vril 1, which was propelled by an anti-gravity effect. (This was the same year as Viktor Schauberger discussed his flying disk ideas with Hitler.)
The thinking behind Paperclip was exemplified in a letter Major General Hugh Knerr, Deputy Commanding General for Administration of US Strategic Forces in Europe, wrote to Lieutenant General Carl Spatz in March 1945: "Occupation of German scientific and industrial establishments has revealed the fact that we have been alarmingly backward in many fields of research, if we do not take this opportunity to seize apparatus and the brains that developed it and put this combination back to work promptly, we will remain several years behind while we attempt to cover a field already exploited." There was however, one slight problem: It was illegal, for US law explicitly prohibited Nazi officials from immigrating to America, and as many as three-quarters of the scientists in question were allegedly committed Nazis. (Indeed as at least 1600 scientists and their dependants were taken to America under Operation Paperclip and its successor projects, it could hardly avoid including Nazis.)
Operation Paperclip was carried out by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) and had two aims: Firstly, to exploit German Scientists for American research by rounding up Nazi scientists and taking them to America. and, secondly, to deny these intellectual resources to the Soviet Union (7). (The name ‘Operation Paperclip’ derived from the fact that those individuals selected to go to the United States were distinguished by paperclips on their files joining their scientific papers with regular immigration forms.(8)) The Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) then conducted background investigations on the identified scientists, and in February 1947 the Director of the JIOA, Navy Captain Bosquet Wev, submitted the first set of dossiers to the State and Justice Departments for review. These dossiers, though, proved to be damning, with Samuel Klaus, the State Department’s representative on the JOIA Board claiming that all the scientists in the first batch were ‘ardent Nazis’. The visa requests were consequently denied. (Wev already knew those proposed had Nazi backgrounds this for in a memo dated 27th April 1948 to the Pentagon’s Director of Intelligence, he wrote "Security investigations conducted by the military have disclosed the fact that the majority of German scientists were members of either the Nazi Party or one or more of its affiliates." (9) Wev was furious and he fired off a memo to the State Department in March 1948 warning that "the best interests of the United States have been subjugated to the efforts expended in ‘beating a dead Nazi horse’" (10).
By this time the Nazi Intelligence leader, Reinhard Gehlen had met with the future CIA Director (26th February 1953 – 29th November 1961), Allen Dulles (right), and they had hit it off. Gehlen was a master spy for the Nazis and had infiltrated Russia with his vast intelligence network. (In 1942 the future CIA Director Dulles had moved to Bern, Switzerland, as Head of Office of Strategic Services to negotiate with some Nazi leaders who were already convinced they were going to lose WWII and wanted a deal with the US about a possible future war with the USSR.) Dulles was not above pursuing his own agenda with the Nazis, for he had worked with many of them before the war; as a prominent New York lawyer (1926-1942 and again from 1946 to 1950). When Gehlen surrendered to the US, he was taken to Fort Hunt, Virginia, where he and the US Army reached an agreement: his intelligence unit would work for and be funded by the US until a new German Government came into power.
In 1932 he received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and he was then offered a grant to conduct and develop scientific investigations on liquid-fuelled rocket engines (15). Von Braun’s rocket experiments were tested at the Kummersdorf Proving Grounds, sixty miles south of Berlin, between 1932 and 1937.
As the war entered its dying throws in 1945, von Braun ordered two men to find an abandoned mine in the Harz Mountains to hide data about the V-2s. Several large boxes were then placed in a discovered cave and von Braun sent his younger brother Magnus off on a bicycle he had borrowed from a local innkeeper to look for Allies to whom they could surrender. Von Braun and his scientific staff duly surrendered to the US Army whilst most of the production engineers were taken prisoner by the Soviets (20). After entering America as part of Project Paperclip, on a pay of $6 a day plus lodging in a military installation, Braun worked on guided missiles for the US Army. He returned to Bavaria in 1948 to marry his second cousin and he later served as Technical Director then later Chief of the Guided Missile Development Division of Redstone Arsenal from 1950 to 1956 whilst living in Huntsville, Alabama (21). Von Braun was later appointed Director of Development Operations Division of the Army Missile Agency, which developed the Jupiter-C rocket that was to successfully launch the western’s hemisphere’s first satellite, ‘Explorer-I’ on 31st January 1958, auguring the birth of the American Space Programme (22). Two years later von Braun and his team were transferred to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre where he served as Director from July 1960 to February 1970. During the 1950s and 60s he achieved an almost celebrity status as one of Walt Disney’s experts on the ‘World of Tomorrow’. In 1970 he became NASA’s associate administrator and without him, it is unlikely that the organisation would ever have put man on the Moon.
His dossier was apparently rewritten so he didn’t appear an enthusiastic (alleged) Nazi and he attempted to play down his real Nazi involvement by claiming "In 1939 [sic] I was officially demanded to join the National Socialist Party. At this time I was already Technical Director at Peenemünde … The technical work had … attracted attention at higher and higher levels. Thus, my refusal to join the party would have meant that I would have to abandon the work of my life. My membership in the party did not include any political activity (23)." However, von Braun’s claim was simply untrue, for other scientists successfully used an old rule of the Weimar Republic that was still in use, forcing anyone in the military to abstain from political affiliation.
When in his thirties, Oberth took Wernher von Braun (who affectionately referred to Oberth as his ‘teacher’) on as an assistant, and they worked together at Peenemunde developing the V2 rocket. After entering the US at the end of the war along with the remaining 100 V2 rockets and components, Oberth again worked with Von Braun as the entire Peenemunde team was re-assembled at the White Sands Proving Grounds. Oberth and Von Braun continued their work and it was a later development of the same V2 rocket which had inflicted so much damage on Northern Europe that was eventually to propel the first American into space in the Saturn V rocket. Oberth retired three years after entering the US and returned to Germany where he headed us the Oberth Commission for the German Government into the UFO phenomenon. TAGS: UFOs of the Third Reich, Nazi UFOs of the Third Reich, UFOs of the Third Reich Allegations, Hannebu Flying Disk, Operation Paperclip, Nazi UFOs
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Whatever their exact nature, it appears confirmed that a range
of alternative design aircraft were by now either on the drawing board, hovering
above the ground, or crashing into it. Some of these designs proved viable and
successes were being reported. 
After the end of the war in 1945, Russian and American
intelligence teams began a hunt to track down this perceived military and
scientific booty of the advanced German technology. Following the discovery of
particle/laser beam weaponry in German military bases, the US War Department
decided that the US must not only control this technology, but also the
scientists who had helped develop it "to ensure that [America] takes full
advantage of those significant developments which are deemed vital to our
national security." It therefore launched a project to bring these personnel to
the United States. Whilst initially publicised the nature, extent and secrecy of
the project, later termed ‘Operation Paperclip’ remained classified until
1973.
However President Truman (left) decided that the national
interest was paramount and that America needed the German scientists to work on
America’s behalf. In fairness to Truman, he expressly ordered that anyone found
to "have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in
its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism or militarism" must be excluded
from the operation.
The following month, 27th April 1948, Wev again wrote to
his superiors concerned about the delays in approving the German scientists. He
stated "In light of the situation existing in Europe today, it is conceivable
that continued delay and opposition to the immigration of these scientists could
result in their eventually falling into then hands of the Russians who would
then gain the valuable information and ability possessed by these men. Such an
eventuality could have a most serious and adverse effect on the national
Security of the United States." (11) 
Kummersdorf was the launch site of two German V-2 rockets in
1934 (16). After their launch, Braun started work on a jet-assisted take off
vehicle for heavy bombers and all-rocket fighters (17) however Kummersdorf was
too small for this task, and so von Braun relocated to Peenemunde on the Baltic
Coast where he became director from 1937-1945. This site was then equipped with
laboratories and industrial facilities to facilitate the development, production
and testing of the German V-1 (Vengeance Weapon 1) and V-2, (Vengeance Weapon 2)
rockets (18). It was this V-2 rocket that inflicted such heavy damage on England
during the war. Von Braun was not a reluctant Nazi. Indeed, "he joined the
National Socialist Aviation Corps, getting his pilot’s license in 1933, the DAF
trade organisation, a hunting organisation associated with the Nazis, the air
raid protection investigation, and the SS horseback riding school (19)." Von
Braun’s own admissions in US Army records further show that he was a former SS
Major who frequently visited the underground rocket factory where 25,000
prisoners from the concentration camp Dora had died. According to the former
executive producer of CNN’s investigative unit, Linda Hunt, von Braun attended a
meeting that discussed rounding up of citizens off the streets of France to be
taken to Dora.
Over a course of twenty years, von Braun received
approximately 25 honorary degrees and he accepted many other awards and medals,
presented to him from small cities, to NASA and even the President. (Right - Von
Braun with President Kennedy.)
Wernher von Braun’s mentor, Hermann Oberth also entered the
US after the war under Operation Paperclip. Born 25th June 1894 in
the Transylvanian town of Hermannstadt, Oberth (right with von Braun) is widely
recognised as the founding father of modern rocketry, having published the paper
in 1923 that was to so inspire von Braun, ‘Die Rakete zu den
Planetenraumen’ (By Rocket into Planetary Space.) This was followed by a
longer version (429 pages) in 1929 that was internationally regarded as a work
of tremendous scientific importance. 
