Brian Sauvey (6:56)
As it does, and as you continue to watch the clock, you notice that the seconds seem to tick by slower and slower. Then, when the train finally reaches the speed of light, the clock stops moving altogether. Its image is frozen in the last instant before the train hit top speed. You wonder if the clock is somehow broken, if the timing of its braking is coincidental with your light speed trip. But no, back at the station, it is still ticking away like normal, for itself and everyone else there, only for you. Traveling away from it at light speed. Has it stopped? The natural question is, which reality is the true reality, the one in which the clock still ticks, or yours, in which it has stopped completely? This question plagued Albert Einstein for many years. He could not shake the image from his head. Einstein knew, as we all do, that that reality has objectivity, that things and events happen in real and measurable ways. But he also knew that someone traveling at light speed, away from something would not be able to receive any information from whatever was behind them. Why? Because the light wouldn't reach them. So, again, which reality is true? This question, and the answers he pursued eventually led Einstein to his theory of general relativity, a theory of motion in space and time that has governed the field of kinematics and mechanics since its founding. And still today, it is, as far as approximations go, true. And with its truth comes a set of rules. The first rule states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. The laws of the natural world break down whenever this limit is exceeded, making it a fixed boundary of creation. The second rule, as a consequence of the first, is that while it is relativistically possible to travel forward in time, it is never possible to travel backward. These rules have been accepted and held as ironclad in the scientific community ever since. Or, perhaps more accurately, accepted for the most part. But what about those people, scientists or otherwise, who didn't or don't accept them? In 1925, the German state experienced its first sigh of relief since the Treaty of Versailles had been signed some six years earlier. The treaty which ended World War I, dealt a death blow to Europe as it had been before the war. For Germany in particular, it guaranteed a level of poverty and instability that persisted until a brief period before World War II. Led by its multi party parliamentary system, 1925 found Germany in the middle of her Weimar Republic arc. The Republic achieved its first semblance of control and credibility with the election of President Paul von Hindenburg. In this short reprieve from total societal chaos, other political parties were able to consolidate and strategize for their chance at power. One such party, the National Socialist Party, was led by a charismatic Austrian native named Adolf Hitler. His leadership of the Nazi party was nothing short of controversial. Less than a year before, he had been in prison on charges related to a failed couple meant to overthrow the Republic. But it was that prison time that gave him renewed favor among the nationalists. To them he was a martyr and he even had the manifesto to prove it. While in prison, Hitler wrote what he considered his life's work. Mein Kampf. Ultimately, the details of Hitler's rise to power are neither here nor there. For the purposes of this episode, what matters is that he did in fact gain the power he sought and upon doing so began reorganizing the upper echelons of government to ensure two the efficiency of his regime and the protection of his regime. On the protection front, Hitler commissioned the creation of a kind of Praetorian guard for himself, the Schutzstaffel, or more simply, the ss. A few years later, the SS would reach its final form under Hitler's oversight and the direct leadership of Heinrich Himmler. While the Reich matured before its global debut at the start of World War II, the SS under Himmler evolved into an advanced and secretive army loyal to the Fuhrer above all else, even Germany itself. On the eve of global catastrophe, Hitler had a specialized team of highly motivated, highly trained and well funded individuals, eager to accomplish whatever his will might conjure. And then World War II began. But there is another man worth mentioning who, though not part of the central leadership, was nonetheless an integral mind in the Nazi regime. Hans Kammler. Born to middle class parents in what is now Poland, Kammler showed a technical aptitude throughout his schooling years that eventually earned him a doctorate in engineering from the Technical Institute in Munich. After a few years working in building code administration for small municipalities, Kamler joined the Nazi party and rose quickly through the ranks of SS officers until he entered the Waffen ss, the hardened combat branch of the Guard service. As a Waffen soldier, Kammler developed a Reputation for ruthless fanaticism to the cause rivaled only by Himmler himself. This earned him a promotion out of the Waffen, along with the title of General in Hitler's SS Army. Specifically, Kamler was put in charge of constructing every SS project that Hitler initiated. Everything from office buildings to concentration camps fell under his sharp eye for both engineering and National Socialist ideology. To Himmler, Hitler and the few others above him, he did not disappoint. With a vast force of labor at his disposal, Kamler built and built and built. He was the prototypical Nazi in this sphere. Efficient, effective and entirely ruthless in his expectations and execution. In August of 1943, deep into the war, the British Royal Air Force successfully bombed some of the Reich's most important weapons production facilities, the sites where its most classified weapons projects were undertaken. The attack led to a closed door meeting between Hitler, Kammler and one of Hitler's chief advisors, Albert Speer. In that meeting they decided that German rocket production and other secret projects should be moved underground for three reasons. It would reduce the risk of destruction and its subsequent costs. It would reduce the chance of Allied intelligence gathering information on these classified and dangerous weapons. And it would reduce the risk of collateral damage to SS and other Nazi personnel should volatile weapons malfunction during production. Kamler was tasked with moving these facilities underground, a project everyone expected would take years. He completed it in mere months. With a merciless schedule and endless slave labor, Kammler had every weapons program fully operational underground before the end of 1943. Such excellent work deserved a reward from the Fuhrer, who was happy to oblige. Total oversight of all secret weapons programs in the Third Reich was handed to Hans Kamler. And so everything leading to one of the most enduring mysteries of Nazi Germany was set in motion. You see, Kamler was exactly the kind of individual I described earlier. The kind who rejected the rules of Einstein's relativistic physics, rules that forbade ideas like time travel. Upon his rise to such high office, Kamler wasted no time forming special research and development divisions within the SS in general and the Waffen SS in particular. The first of these groups, known simply as the R and D group, was led by Heinrich Gartner under Kamler's direction. It was the more above board of the two secretive divisions. The other, however, was top secret. Even among the top secret, endorsed and funded by Kamler, it was known as the fep. What the acronym stands for has been lost to history. What is known is that it was managed by another SS4 star general, Emile Mazieu, a Mysterious figure with few records tying him to the SS at all. Mazieux appears to have been hand selected by Kamler to run this dark research operation with a single create the ultimate Wunderwaff. Wunderwaff is German for wonder weapon. The idea was simple. With limitless funding, labor and authority, the Third Reich stood at the precipice of technological possibility. Unhindered by mainstream understandings of mechanical and quantum physics, Kamler and Mazieux intended to turn imagination into reality. In doing so, they hoped to ensure the total victory of the Axis powers in World War II and a modern Germany at the forefront of weapons innovation. The outputs of these two groups, the ones we know about, already, testify to the success of the vision. They apparently produced multiple Wunderwaffen in their quest for domination. The Graf Zeppelin aircraft carrier. The type 18U boat. The mythical giant Rat tank. Countless missiles. And the Sun Gun mirror array designed to concentrate sunlight on massive areas until they erupted into sudden flame. Kammler achieved his goals many times over. His oversight of the secret weapons program fueled obsessive U.S. interest in German engineering after the war. An obsession that led to Operation Paperclip and and the legal smuggling of Nazi mines into the US space and medical programs, the atomic bomb, the Apollo missions, it can all be traced back to Kamler, Gartner and Mazieux's search for the Wunderwaff. But if the whispers are true, Kamler and Mazieux were never satisfied with these more conventional achievements. Their writings suggest they did not believe they had yet built the true Holy Grail of Wunderwaffen. Up to the final years of the war, they were convinced that there was still meat left on the bone of technological advancement. And so, in dark underground factories somewhere in the ancient land of Prussia, Mazu kept working on something. Something he believed would set man free from his limitations. Something he believed he could finally call his own. Wunderwaff. A device so groundbreaking, so mysterious, so biblical in its capabilities, it would transcend the realm of wonder and enter into the category of miraculous. We went by various codenames, the Gate Time and the Lantern Bearer. All were suggestive, but all were temporary. Eventually, the German title Die Glock struck, and that is the name by which it is remembered today. In the uproar of the antebellum 20th century, an anonymous source emerged from deep within the Third Reich's circle of trust. He has remained anonymous ever since he first emerged, but the stories he shared have nonetheless immortalized him. He found a Polish war historian named Igor Witkowski, the only war historian Willing to listen and relayed the stories to him. He is how we know about the rumored Bell at all. Reported by Watkowski to be a cylinder with a domed top, the bell was 9ft tall and 5ft in diameter. A ceramic outer shell had two counter rotating cylinders inside that spun on a central axis. These interior cylinders were filled with a substance known as red Mercury or Zerum 525, a thorium beryllium mercury compound that shed radioactive isotopes when disturbed. This radiation resulted in massive amounts of electromagnetic energy being produced by the operation of the machine. But, and here's where it gets crazy. What powered the operation? Well, that is just it. It the Bell powered the Bell, or so it is said. If true, this means that the Nazis discovered the theory and built the technology capable of tapping into the zero point energy presumed to exist in the aether of space time. Essentially, the Bell was a perpetual motion device that due to its intimate connection with the quanta of reality, could manipulate the different fields of matter and gravity and electricity around it to accomplish whatever the scientists wished. In short, the Nazi Bell was a time traveling, teleporting and gravity defying engine capable of turning the apparent nothingness of space into a limitless energy source or a powerful energy death ray that could destroy entire cities. But did the Nazi Bell really exist? And if it did, where is it today? Unfortunately, the answer to both questions is we don't know. Any detailed answer that is given with any confidence must be seen for what it is. Pure speculation. And yet, some of these speculative answers are well worth considering, both for their strangeness and for the explanatory power they have regarding other loose ends of the Third Reich. In World War II, as the Nazi war effort crumbled, the politics within the Reich turned into chaos. Most notably, Himmler's SS enacted a form of martial law within the higher up structures of the government. Upon Hitler's death and the turning tide of the European front, assassinations stacked up as general after general was unceremoniously done away with. Why Himmler did this is unknown. Perhaps it was mercy in the face of defeat and post war sanctions. Perhaps it was insurance to protect the Nazi secrets from the victorious Allies. Whatever the reason though, the result was the same. Very few of those in the upper echelons of the Nazi regiment escaped unscathed. In the midst of this upheaval, Hans Kamler was a fish out of water. He defied orders, moved troops and goods, and researched from Alpine village to Alpine village. Following pure instinct, he became a lone wolf. And steadily the men following him reduced in number to virtually zero. All he had were his own wits and the scientific findings that he believed would define the coming millennium. He knew he had to escape the chaos and he knew he had to keep working. He had to stay alive for the greater good of the Nazi cause. And lucky for him, rumors started to spread about a Nazi outpost established in Argentina. A place insulated from the accusations of war crimes. A place where the cause and the work could be reborn. Kamler made plans to go there. He bribed a couple pilots and the marshal of an airfield before boarding the last remaining Junkers 390 cargo jet in the world and setting off through the sky. Hans Kammler was never officially seen again. But some say he wasn't alone on that plane. Some say that the infamous Bell was right beside him, helping him and promising him some positive turn in the near future. Thus we can assume that Kamler thought himself safe. Free from the prying eyes of the Allies and free from the trigger happy hand of the SS that helped make him. He was going to Argentina, where he could die peacefully and productively. Only it is very likely that he never made it to Argentina. You see, though Kamler never shows up in any post war trial or Operation Paperclip case file, there is a small record which betrays that he may have nonetheless fallen into American custody. On November 2, 1945, Brigadier General George MacDonald, Director of US Intelligence in Europe, filed a report commissioning the immediate integration of their newest capture, Hans Kamler. Whether the report was real or a ruse, whether Kamler was interrogated or not, whether he was part of the black US ops after the fact, again, we just don't know. But what if he was kept alive by the us? What if he and the Bell with him were flown back to the States in order to help its people advance? Well, if we grant that this happened, for a moment, it seems like it was a wasted effort, right? I mean, if Kamala and the Bell came to the us, why didn't we see its technology in use everywhere today? But that is just it. We don't see it because it is being hidden. There is grand conspiracy tied to this special Bell that behind the veil of our conventional space program there is a secret operation, a dark space program which tests and uses technologies beyond our comprehension. Technologies that when witnessed, seem alien to us. Roswell, the Nevada Lights, Area 51, the incident at Devil's Den Skinwalker Ranch, and all the other UFO sightings reported by laypeople across our country and the world. What if they are all government air and spacecraft engineered using Bell technology and kept secret from us for some higher government purpose. What if indeed. And that is what we are investigating in this episode of Haunted Cosmos. Because you see, the Nazi Bell is not the only technology that has supposedly vanished right when it fell into the hands of the US Government. Perhaps we should explore some other examples. Hey Ben, I just read that our great grandparents probably experimented with butter on their dry skin as a moisturizer. Is that why you look so radiant?
