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Nazi UFOs

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In ufology , conspiracy theory , science fiction , and comic book stories, claims or stories have circulated linking UFOs to Nazi Germany . The German UFO theories describe supposedly successful attempts to develop advanced aircraft or spacecraft prior to and during World War II , further asserting the post-war survival of these craft in secret underground bases in Antarctica , South America, or the United States, along with their creators.

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70-607: During the Second World War, unusual sightings in the skies above Europe were often interpreted as novel Nazi technology. In the first years of the Cold War, Western nations speculated that unusual sightings might stem from Soviet deployment of captured or reverse-engineered Nazi technology. In World War II, the so-called " foo fighters ", a variety of unusual and anomalous aerial phenomena, were witnessed by both Axis and Allied personnel. While some foo fighter reports were dismissed as

140-430: A hoax . Die Glocke and other alleged Nazi "miracle weapons" have been dramatized in video games, television shows, and novels. However, many skeptics have doubted that such a Bell UFO was actually designed or ever built. Foo fighter The term foo fighters was used by Allied aircraft pilots during World War II to describe various unidentified flying objects or mysterious aerial phenomena seen in

210-477: A craft powered by a circular plane of rotating turbine blades 49 ft (15 m) in diameter. He said that the project had been developed by him and his team at BMW 's Prague works until April 1945, when he fled to Czechoslovakia . His designs for the disk and a model were stolen from his workshop in Bremerhaven-Lehe in 1948 and he was convinced that Czech agents had built his craft for "a foreign power". In

280-772: A fleet of UFOs from the base to establish the Fourth Reich . In popular culture , this alleged UFO fleet is referred to as “The Final Battalion”. Die Glocke ("The Bell") was a purported top-secret Nazi scientific technological device, secret weapon, or Wunderwaffe . First described by Polish journalist and author Igor Witkowski (* 1963) in Prawda o Wunderwaffe (2000), it was later popularized by military journalist and author Nick Cook , who associated it with Nazi occultism , antigravity , and free energy suppression research. Mainstream reviewers have criticized claims about Die Glocke as being pseudoscientific , recycled rumors, and

350-483: A form of ground-launched, automatically guided, jet-propelled flak mine called the Feuerball (Fireball). This device, supposedly operated by special SS units, resembled a tortoise shell in shape, and it flew by means of gas jets that spun like a Catherine wheel around the fuselage. Miniature klystron tubes inside the device, in combination with the gas jets, created the characteristic glowing spheroid appearance of

420-724: A former Der Spiegel journalist who said "some of the articles at issue appeared to confirm certain German stereotypes about Trump voters, asking "was this possible because of ideological bias?" An apology ensued from Der Spiegel for looking for a cliché of a Trump-voting town, and not finding it. Mathias Bröckers , former Die Tageszeitung editor, wrote: "the imaginative author simply delivered what his superiors demanded and fit into their spin". American journalist James Kirchick claimed in The Atlantic that " Der Spiegel has long peddled crude and sensational anti-Americanism." In

490-540: A former Italian Minister of National Economy under the Mussolini regime, it claimed that "types of flying discs were designed and studied in Germany and Italy as early as 1942". Belluzzo also expressed the opinion that "some great power is launching discs to study them". The same month, German technician Rudolf Schriever (1909-1953) gave an interview to German news magazine Der Spiegel in which he claimed that he had designed

560-435: A grand scale". When Stefan Aust took over in 1994, the magazine's readers realized that his personality was different from his predecessor. In 2005, a documentary by Stephan Lamby quoted him as follows: "We stand at a very big cannon!" Politicians of all stripes who had to deal with the magazine's attention often voiced their disaffection for it. The outspoken conservative Franz Josef Strauss contended that Der Spiegel

630-512: A press correspondent from the Associated Press in Paris, Bob Wilson, was sent to the 415th at their base outside of Dijon , France, to investigate this story. It was at this time that the term was cleaned up to just "foo fighters". The squadron commander, Capt. Harold Augsperger, also decided to sanitize the term to "foo fighters" in the historical data of the squadron. Other proposed origins of

700-592: A separate interview with Der Spiegel in October 1952, he said that the plans were stolen from a farm he was hiding in near Regen on 14 May 1945. There are other discrepancies between the two interviews that add to the confusion. In 1953, when Avro Canada announced that it was developing the VZ-9-AV Avrocar , a circular jet aircraft with an estimated speed of 1,500 mph (2,400 km/h), German engineer Georg Klein claimed that such designs had been developed during

770-498: A term to cover a multitude of otherwise inexplicable events. Der Spiegel Der Spiegel ( German pronunciation: [deːɐ̯ ˈʃpiːɡl̩] , lit.   ' The Mirror ' , stylized in all caps ) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg . With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It

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840-495: A test pilot and engineer between 1940 and 1941, but this has never been corroborated. In post-war Germany, Schriever drove supply trucks for the US Army but told newspaper reporters that delegates from foreign powers were constantly making him offers regarding his wartime projects. Aeronautical engineer Roy Fedden remarked that the only craft that could approach the capabilities attributed to flying saucers were those being designed by

910-455: Is based on two pillars; firstly the moral authority established by investigative journalism since the early years and proven alive by several scoops during the 1980s; secondly the economic power of the prolific Spiegel publishing house. Since 1988, it has produced the TV program Spiegel TV , and further diversified during the 1990s. During the second quarter of 1992 the circulation of Der Spiegel

980-501: The Spiegel affair in 1962 and the Flick affair in the 1980s. According to The Economist , Der Spiegel is one of continental Europe 's most influential magazines. The news website by the same name was launched in 1994 under the name Spiegel Online with an independent editorial staff. Today, the content is created by a shared editorial team and the website uses the same media brand as

1050-636: The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists , Paper Trail Media  [ de ] and 69 media partners including Distributed Denial of Secrets and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and more than 270 journalists in 55 countries and territories to produce the ' Cyprus Confidential ' report on the financial network which supports the regime of Vladimir Putin , mostly with connections to Cyprus, and showed Cyprus to have strong links with high-up figures in

1120-722: The Nazi Party , the Vril Society developed a series of flying disc prototypes. With the Nazi defeat, the society allegedly retreated to a base in Antarctica and vanished into the Hollow Earth to meet up with the leaders of an advanced race inhabiting inner Earth. When German Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel started Samisdat Publishers in the 1970s, he initially catered to the UFOlogy community, which

1190-513: The Vril Society of Berlin. Several years later, writers, including Jan van Helsing , Norbert-Jürgen Ratthofer , and Vladimir Terziski , have built on their work, connecting the Vril Society with UFOs. Among their claims, they imply that the society may have made contact with an alien race and dedicated itself to creating spacecraft to reach the aliens. In partnership with the Thule Society and

1260-504: The self-propelled anti-aircraft gun of the same name ), Andromeda-Gerät , Flugkreisel , Kugelwaffe , Jenseitsflugmaschine , and Reichsflugscheibe have all been referenced. Model kit companies like Airfix and Revell have released kits of the "Haunebu", and it is featured in video games like X-Plane 11 and Warplanes: WW2 Dogfight . Accounts appeared as early as 1950, likely inspired by historical German development of specialized engines such as Viktor Schauberger 's "Repulsine" around

1330-697: The 422nd Night-Fighter Squadron stationed in Occupied Belgium during the first week of October 1944. At the time, these were erroneously believed to be Messerschmitt Me 163 rocket-powered interceptors, which did not operate at night. However, the bulk of the sightings started occurring in the last week of November 1944, when pilots flying over Western Europe by night reported seeing fast-moving round glowing objects following their aircraft. The objects were variously described as fiery, and glowing red, white, or orange. Some pilots described them as resembling Christmas-tree lights and reported that they seemed to toy with

1400-582: The Germans towards the end of the war. Fedden (who was also chief of the technical mission to Germany for the Ministry of Aircraft Production) stated in 1945: I have seen enough of their designs and production plans to realize that if they (the Germans) had managed to prolong the war some months longer, we would have been confronted with a set of entirely new and deadly developments in air warfare. Fedden also added that

1470-488: The Germans were working on a number of very unusual aeronautical projects, though he did not elaborate upon his statement. By the 1960s, fringe authors began spreading tales of Nazi UFOs that were tied to the occult or aliens. According to these theories and fictional stories, various potential code-names or sub-classifications of Nazi UFO craft such as Rundflugzeug , Feuerball , Diskus , Haunebu , Hauneburg-Gerät , Glocke , V7 , Vril , Kugelblitz (not related to

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1540-560: The Kremlin, some of whom have been sanctioned. Government officials including Cyprus president Nikos Christodoulides and European lawmakers began responding to the investigation's findings in less than 24 hours, calling for reforms and launching probes. On 19 December 2018, Der Spiegel made public that reporter Claas Relotius had admitted that he had "falsified his articles on a grand scale", inventing facts, persons and quotations in at least 14 of his stories. The magazine uncovered

1610-575: The Nazi era. Klein identified two types of supposed German flying disks: Miethe claimed he had worked on the V-2 program but no corroborating evidence exists. Georg Klein claimed the engineer had escaped capture by the Soviets in Breslau by flying out in a Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet , which would have been impossible. There is no evidence that Habermohl even existed. Rudolf Schriever claimed he had worked for Heinkel as

1680-508: The aircraft, making wild turns before simply vanishing. Pilots and aircrew reported that the objects flew together in formation with their aircraft and behaved as if they were under intelligent control, but never displayed hostile behavior. However, they could not be outmaneuvered or shot down. The phenomenon was so widespread that the lights earned a name – in the European Theater of Operations they were often called "Kraut fireballs", but for

1750-483: The alleged aircraft may have been Me 262 and for the rest, flak rockets are suggested as the most likely explanation. The whole affair is still something of a mystery and the evidence is very sketchy and varied so that no definite and satisfactory explanation can yet be given. A group of scientists, engineers and former high-ranking Luftwaffe officers were questioned about wartime "Balls of Fire" reports by staff from United States Air Force in Europe's intelligence section in

1820-471: The bomber pilots. Also, Vesco alleges that the devices were also intended to have an "offensive" capability. Electrostatic discharges from the klystron tubes would, he stated, interfere with the ignition systems of the bombers, causing the engines to stall and the planes to crash. Although there is no hard evidence to support the reality of the Feuerball drone, this theory has been taken up by other aviation/ufology authors, and it has even been cited by some as

1890-450: The course of this investigation, the editorial offices were raided by police while Rudolf Augstein and other Der Spiegel editors were arrested on charges of treason. Despite a lack of sufficient authority, Strauss even went after the article's author, Conrad Ahlers  [ ar ; arz ; cs ; fr ; de ; no ; pl ] , who was consequently arrested in Spain where he was on holiday. When

1960-408: The direction or speed of the object. This information, they reasoned, was vital for evaluation purposes to the nation or nations assumed to be performing the tests. Similar sentiments regarding German technology resurfaced during the 1947 flying disc craze after Kenneth Arnold 's widely reported close encounter with nine crescent-shaped objects moving at a high velocity. Personnel of Project Sign ,

2030-421: The early 1930s, first being used by cartoonist Bill Holman , who peppered his Smokey Stover fireman cartoon strips with "foo" signs and puns. The term "foo" was borrowed from Smokey Stover by a radar operator in the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, Donald J. Meiers, who, according to most 415th members, gave the foo fighters their name. Meiers was from Chicago and was an avid reader of Holman's strip, which

2100-427: The early autumn of 1945. None of the thirteen interviewed claimed any knowledge of a German secret weapons program that could have explained the sightings. The author Renato Vesco revived the wartime theory that the foo fighters were a Nazi secret weapon in his work Intercept UFO , reprinted in a revised English edition as Man-Made UFOs: 50 Years of Suppression in 1994. Vesco claims that the foo fighters were in fact

2170-546: The federal parliament launched an inquiry into Spiegel ' s accusations that bribed members of parliament had promoted Bonn over Frankfurt as the seat of West Germany's government. During the Spiegel scandal in 1962, which followed the release of a report about the possible low state of readiness of the German armed forces , minister of defense and conservative figurehead Franz Josef Strauss had Der Spiegel investigated. In

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2240-531: The first U.S. Air Force UFO investigation group, noted that the advanced flying wing aeronautical designs of the German Horten brothers were similar to some UFO reports. In 1959, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt , the first head of Project Blue Book (Project Sign's follow-up investigation) wrote: When WWII ended, the Germans had several radical types of aircraft and guided missiles under development. The majority were in

2310-782: The first operational jet-powered Me 262 fighter planes. A minority of foo fighters seemed to have inflicted damage to allied aircraft. Ghost rockets were rocket - or missile -shaped unidentified flying objects sighted in 1946, mostly in Sweden and nearby countries like Finland. The first reports of ghost rockets were made on February 26, 1946, by Finnish observers. About 2,000 sightings were logged between May and December 1946, with peaks on 9 and 11 August 1946. Two hundred sightings were verified with radar returns, and authorities recovered physical fragments which were attributed to ghost rockets. Investigations concluded that many ghost rocket sightings were probably caused by meteors . For example,

2380-418: The foo fighters. A crude form of collision avoidance radar ensured the craft would not crash into another airborne object, and an onboard sensor mechanism would even instruct the machine to depart swiftly if it was fired upon. The purpose of the Feuerball , according to Vesco, was twofold. The appearance of this weird device inside a bomber stream would (and indeed did) have a distracting and disruptive effect on

2450-469: The former German rocket facility at Peenemünde , and were long-range tests by the Soviets of captured German V-1 or V-2 missiles, or perhaps another early form of cruise missile because of the ways they were sometimes seen to maneuver. This prompted the Swedish Army to issue a directive stating that newspapers were not to report the exact location of ghost rocket sightings, or any information regarding

2520-426: The fraud after a co-author of one of Relotius's stories, Juan Moreno, became suspicious of the veracity of Relotius's contributions and gathered evidence against him. Relotius resigned, telling the magazine that he was "sick" and needed to get help. Der Spiegel left his articles accessible, but with a notice referring to the magazine's ongoing investigation into the fabrications. The Wall Street Journal cited

2590-663: The help of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden unveiled the systematic wiretapping of Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel 's private cell phone over a period of over 10 years at the hands of the National Security Agency 's Special Collection Service (SCS). According to a 2013 report by The New York Times , the magazine's leading role in German investigative journalism has diminished, since other German media outlets, including Süddeutsche Zeitung , Bild , ARD and ZDF , have become more involved in investigative reporting. In November 2023, Der Spiegel joined with

2660-467: The legal case collapsed, the scandal led to a major shake-up in chancellor Konrad Adenauer 's cabinet, and Strauss had to stand down. The affair was generally received as an attack on the freedom of the press. Since then, Der Spiegel has repeatedly played a significant role in revealing political grievances and misdeeds, including the Flick Affair . The Spiegel scandal is now remembered for altering

2730-591: The magazine. In 2010 Der Spiegel was employing the equivalent of 80 full-time fact checkers , which the Columbia Journalism Review called "most likely the world's largest fact checking operation". The same year it was the third best-selling general interest magazine in Europe with a circulation of 1,016,373 copies. In 2018, Der Spiegel became involved in a journalistic scandal after it discovered and made public that one of its leading reporters, Claas Relotius , had "falsified his articles on

2800-491: The misperceptions of troops in the heat of combat, others were taken seriously, and leading scientists such as Luis Alvarez began to investigate them. In at least some cases, Allied intelligence and commanders suspected that foo fighters reported in the European theater represented advanced German aircraft or weapons, particularly given that Germans had already developed such technological innovations as V-1 and V-2 missiles and

2870-483: The most likely explanation for the phenomena in at least one recent TV "documentary" on Nazi secret weapons . However, others cite the single-sourced nature of the claims, the complete lack of evidence supporting them, and the implausible capabilities of the supposed device as marking this explanation as nonsense. Any type of electrical discharge from the wings of airplanes (see St. Elmo's Fire ) has been suggested as an explanation, since it has been known to appear at

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2940-552: The most part called "foo fighters". The military took the sightings seriously, suspecting that the mysterious sightings might be secret German weapons, but further investigation revealed that German and Japanese pilots had reported similar sightings. On 13 December 1944, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in Paris issued a press release, which was printed in The New York Times

3010-529: The most preliminary stages, but they were the only known craft that could even approach the performance of objects reported by UFO observers. While these early speculations and reports were limited primarily to military personnel, the earliest assertion of German flying saucers in the mass media appears to have been an article which appeared in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale d'Italia in early 1950. Written by Professor Giuseppe Belluzzo , an Italian scientist and

3080-546: The next day, officially describing the phenomenon as a "new German weapon". Follow-up stories, using the term "Foo Fighters", appeared in the New York Herald Tribune and the British Daily Telegraph . In its 15 January 1945 edition, Time magazine carried a story titled "Foo-Fighter", in which it reported that the "balls of fire" had been following USAAF night fighters for over a month, and that

3150-430: The old town part of Hamburg. Der Spiegel 's circulation rose quickly. From 15,000 copies in 1947, it grew to 65,000 in 1948 and 437,000 in 1961. It was nearly 500,000 copies in 1962. By the 1970s, it had reached a plateau at about 900,000 copies. When the German reunification in 1990 made it available to a new readership in former East Germany , the circulation exceeded one million. The magazine's influence

3220-440: The peaks of the sightings, on 9 and 11 August 1946, also fall within the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower . However, most ghost rocket sightings did not occur during meteor shower activity, and furthermore displayed characteristics inconsistent with meteors, such as reported maneuverability. Debate continues as to the origins of the unidentified ghost rockets. In 1946, however, it was thought likely that they originated from

3290-470: The pilots had named it the "foo-fighter". According to Time , descriptions of the phenomena varied, but the pilots agreed that the mysterious lights followed their aircraft closely at high speed. The "balls of fire" phenomenon reported from the Pacific Theater of Operations differed somewhat from the foo fighters reported from Europe; the "ball of fire" resembled a large burning sphere that "just hung in

3360-506: The political culture of post-war Germany and—with the first mass demonstrations and public protests—being a turning point from the old Obrigkeitsstaat ( authoritarian state) to a modern democracy . In 2010, the magazine supported WikiLeaks in publishing leaked materials from the United States State Department , along with The Guardian , The New York Times , El País , and Le Monde and in October 2013 with

3430-582: The printed magazine. The first edition of Der Spiegel was published in Hanover on Saturday, 4 January 1947. Its release was initiated and sponsored by the British occupational administration and preceded by a magazine titled Diese Woche (German: This Week ), which had first been published in November 1946. After disagreements with the British, the magazine was handed over to Rudolf Augstein as chief editor, and

3500-412: The role of opinion leader in the German press. Der Spiegel has a distinctive reputation for revealing political misconduct and scandals. Online Encyclopædia Britannica emphasizes this quality of the magazine as follows: "The magazine is renowned for its aggressive, vigorous, and well-written exposés of government malpractice and scandals." It merited recognition for this as early as 1950 when

3570-733: The skies over both the European and Pacific theaters of operations. Though foo fighters initially described a type of UFO reported and named by the U.S. 415th Night Fighter Squadron , the term was also commonly used to mean any UFO sighting from that period. Formally reported from November 1944 onwards, foo fighters were presumed by witnesses to be secret weapons employed by the enemy. The Robertson Panel explored possible explanations, for instance that they were electrostatic phenomena similar to St. Elmo's fire , electromagnetic phenomena, or simply reflections of light from ice crystals. The nonsense word " foo " emerged in popular culture during

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3640-656: The sky", though it was reported to sometimes follow aircraft. There was speculation that the phenomena could be related to the Japanese fire balloon campaign. As in Europe, no aircraft were reported as having been attacked by a "ball of fire". The postwar Robertson Panel cited foo fighter reports, noting that their behavior did not appear to be threatening, and mentioned possible explanations, for instance that they were electrostatic phenomena similar to St. Elmo's fire , electromagnetic phenomena, or simply reflections of light from ice crystals. The Panel's report suggested that "If

3710-434: The sole owner of Der Spiegel . In 1971, Gruner + Jahr bought back a 25% share in the magazine. In 1974, Augstein restructured the company to make the employees shareholders. All employees with more than three years seniority were offered the opportunity to become an associate and participate in the management of the company, as well as in the profits. Since 1952, Der Spiegel has been headquartered in its own building in

3780-573: The summer of 2022, Der Spiegel published three articles and a podcast regarding the death of a refugee girl on an islet in the Evros river at the Greece–Turkey borders, accusing Greece of failing to aid the refugees which caused the girl's death. But at the end of December 2022, the magazine retracted the articles and the podcast. In 2023, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) wrote that this story

3850-508: The term 'flying saucers' had been popular in 1943–1945, these objects would have been so labeled." Foo fighters were reported on many occasions from around the world. Examples include: The 415th Night-Fighter Squadron's Intelligence Officer, Captain Ringwald, sent a report listing 14 separate incidents in December 1944 and early January 1945 to the intelligence section at XII Tactical Air Command,

3920-550: The term have been a corruption of the French feu for fire, and a corruption of the military acronym FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition). Royal Air Force personnel had reported seeing lights following their aircraft from as early as March 1942, with similar sightings involving RAF bomber crews over the Balkans starting in April 1944. American sightings were first recorded by crews from

3990-538: The time of World War II. Elements of these claims have been incorporated into various works of fictional and purportedly non-fictional media, including video games and documentaries, often mixed in with more substantiated information. German UFO literature very often conforms largely to documented history on the following points: Le Matin des Magiciens (" The Morning of the Magicians "), a 1960 book by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier , made many spectacular claims about

4060-506: The traditions about "Vertigo" which are passed on to them. When a concept thus grows out of anecdotes cemented together with practical necessity, it is bound to acquire elements of mystery. So far as "vertigo" is concerned, no one really knows more than a small part of the facts, but a great deal of the peril. Since aviators are not skilled observers of human behavior, they usually have only the vaguest understanding of their own feelings. Like other naive persons, therefore, they have simply adopted

4130-672: The unit's immediate superiors at 64th Fighter Wing being unable to offer any answers. Without answers of their own, XII TAC requested assistance from Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), in Paris. SHAEF had no knowledge of the phenomenon and asked if the British Air Ministry in London had any information. The Air Ministry's explanation for the Foo Fighter phenomenon was received on 13 March 1945: Bomber Command crews have for some time been reporting similar phenomena. A few of

4200-402: The wingtips of aircraft. It has also been pointed out that some of the descriptions of foo fighters closely resemble those of ball lightning . During April 1945, the U.S. Navy began to experiment on visual illusions as experienced by nighttime aviators. This work began the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Medicine (BUMED) project X-148-AV-4-3. This project pioneered the study of aviators' vertigo and

4270-809: Was "one of the largest fake news breakdowns since Claas Relotius." In January 1978 the office of Der Spiegel in East Berlin was closed by the East German government following the publication of critical articles against the conditions in the country. A special 25 March 2008 edition of the magazine on Islam was banned in Egypt in April 2008 for publishing material deemed by authorities to be insulting Islam and Muhammed . Der Spiegel began moving into its current head office in HafenCity in September 2011. The facility

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4340-524: Was "the Gestapo of our time". He referred to journalists in general as "rats". The Social Democrat Willy Brandt called it "Scheißblatt" (i.e., a "shit paper") during his term in office as Chancellor . Der Spiegel often produces feature-length articles on problems affecting Germany (like demographic trends, the federal system's gridlock or the issues of its education system) and describes optional strategies and their risks in depth. The magazine plays

4410-484: Was 1.1 million copies. In 1994, Spiegel Online was launched. It had separate and independent editorial staff from Der Spiegel . In 1999, the circulation of Der Spiegel was 1,061,000 copies. Der Spiegel had an average circulation of 1,076,000 copies in 2003. In 2007 the magazine started a new regional supplement in Switzerland . A 50-page study of Switzerland, it was the first regional supplement of

4480-612: Was a deliberate hoax to build publicity for Samisdat, although he still defended it as late as 2002. In 1978, Miguel Serrano , a Chilean diplomat and Nazi sympathizer, published El Cordón Dorado: Hitlerismo Esotérico [ The Golden Thread: Esoteric Hitlerism ] (in Spanish) , in which he claimed that Adolf Hitler was an Avatar of Vishnu and was, at that time, communing with Hyperborean gods in an underground Antarctic base in New Swabia . Serrano predicted that Hitler would lead

4550-443: Was extremely agitated and had a copy of the comic strip tucked in his back pocket. He pulled it out and slammed it down on Ringwald's desk and said, "[I]t was another one of those fuckin' foo fighters!" and stormed out of the debriefing room. According to Ringwald, because of the lack of a better name, it stuck. And this was originally what the men of the 415th started calling these incidents: "fuckin' foo fighters". In December 1944,

4620-551: Was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner , a British army officer, and Rudolf Augstein , a former Wehrmacht radio operator who was recognized in 2000 by the International Press Institute as one of the fifty World Press Freedom Heroes . Der Spiegel is known in German-speaking countries mostly for its investigative journalism . It has played a key role in uncovering many political scandals such as

4690-535: Was initiated because a wide variety of anomalous events were being reported by nighttime aviators. Edgar Vinacke, who was the prime flight psychologist on this project, summarized the need for a cohesive and systemic outline of the epidemiology of aviators' vertigo: Pilots do not have sufficient information about phenomena of disorientation, and, as a corollary, are given considerable disorganized, incomplete, and inaccurate information. They are largely dependent upon their own experience, which must supplement and interpret

4760-469: Was renamed Der Spiegel . From the first edition in January 1947, Augstein held the position of editor-in-chief, which he retained until his death on 7 November 2002. After 1950, the magazine was owned by Rudolf Augstein and John Jahr; Jahr's share merged with Richard Gruner's in 1965 to form the publishing company Gruner + Jahr . In 1969, Augstein bought out Gruner + Jahr for DM 42 million and became

4830-464: Was run daily in the Chicago Tribune . Smokey Stover's catch-phrase was "where there's foo, there's fire". In a mission debriefing on the evening of November 27, 1944, Frederic "Fritz" Ringwald, the unit's S-2 Intelligence Officer, stated that Meiers and Pilot Lt. Ed Schleuter had sighted a red ball of fire that appeared to chase them through a variety of high-speed maneuvers. Ringwald said that Meiers

4900-498: Was then at its peak of public acceptance. His books claimed that flying saucers were Nazi secret weapons launched from an underground base in Antarctica, from which the Nazis hoped to conquer the Earth and possibly the planets. Zündel also sold (for $ 9999) seats on an exploration team to locate the polar entrance to the hollow earth . Some who interviewed Zündel claim that he privately admitted it

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