SS Brotherhood of the Bell: The Nazis’ Incredible Secret Technology (28 page)

But Witkowski’s commentary on Oberth’s involvement is perhaps even more unsettling:

Like earlier in the case of professor Gerlach this information reveals to us a certain unusual and significant fact – significant for the work being carried out. Namely that in principle it is unknown what Prof. Oberth was engaged in during the war. One could have the impression that this is some kind of light at the end of the tunnel, which until now has been cloaked in the darkness of night. After all it is known for sure that Oberth was not connected with the centre in Peenemünde, since in this case he would have undoubtedly held at least one of the positions of command, in other words the fact of his engagement would have been known (thousands of specialists employed there worked after the war in other countries, from the USA and USSR to even Egypt and so is out of the question that a possible secret of this kind could not be kept hidden).
So it seems that some kind of alternative program had existed,
being carried out for a long time, and quite a serious one at that.
³³

That is, Oberth’s presence on this trip, particularly in the company of the mysterious Dr. Elizabeth Adler,
whose only known connection to German secret weapons projects is to the Bell
, implies the presence already in Nazi Germany of
two
“space” programs, the one for “public consumption” represented by the V-2 and various other rocket projects, and the other, represented by the Bell. Oberth was perhaps the world’s then-leading theoretician of the problems and solutions for
long term manned space flight.
His presence in the circle of scientists involved with the Bell, such as Dr. Adler, Dr. Gerlach, and Dr. Debus, is yet another clue as to the possible principles of its operation and the possible purpose of the project.

We may summarize the possible clues represented by these individuals and organizational relationships surveyed by Witkowski as follows:

From this list of personnel and their known areas of expertise and research preoccupations, it is fairly easy to draw the conclusion that the Bell may have represented some revolutionary prototypical device for very advanced space flight propulsion that was not based on the inefficient reaction-driven chemical rockets. Indeed, such an interpretation would explain the nominal though tacit involvement of the German navy, for manned spaceflight would require the construction of pressure vessels for outer space flight that would entail similar types of expertise as used in the construction of submarine pressure hulls. Additionally, the German navy would clearly be interested in exotic propulsion for its U-boats, to allow them greater underwater cruising time as well as speeds.

In any case, the presence of Debus, A.E.G., and the Army Ordnance Bureau (
Heereswaffenamt
) that also hovers in the background would seem to indicate a more exclusively
“weapons”
preoccupation with the project. This indication, while mentioned by Witkowski, is, in my opinion, given rather too short shrift in favor of the “propulsion” explanation he seems to prefer. However, as the next two chapters will seek to demonstrate, one must not be too quick to dismiss this aspect of the project.

In any case, the interpretation of the Bell as a breakthrough “field propulsion” device of some sort is clearly the favored theory of British
Jane’s Defense Weekly
author and journalist, Nick Cook,
³⁴
and the “propulsion” theory is clearly that favored and implied by Witkowski.

B. The Operation of the Bell and Its Effects: Witkowski’s
Reconstruction of the Bell

In outlining Witkowski’s presentation of the known operating parameters, construction parameters, and effects of the Bell, I shall attempt to be as thorough as possible in citation of his research, since much of what he says bears directly on my own admittedly more speculative interpretations of some aspects of the Bell. In doing so, I maintain, in concert with Witkowski and Cook, that at a minimum the Bell represented such a breakthrough in “field propulsion,” but I maintain that the Bell represents much more than that. I believe that a propulsion breakthrough was the motivation of the project, but I also believe, that along the way and perhaps even near the very beginning of the project before the full-sized “Bell” was built, that the Germans also encountered some un-anticipated effects that also became principal areas of investigation for the project. As I will attempt to show, in the light of contemporary models and experimentation, the Bell exhibits many hallmarks of a device deliberately designed to
cohere
or “tap into” the Zero Point Energy, and of a device designed to do so not only for propulsion purposes, but for
weaponization.
It is thus best seen, perhaps, as a prototypical “scalar” device, a prototypical technology of an extremely unified physics. With this in mind, we turn now to Witkowski’s survey.

According to Witkowski, the principal laboratories for the work on the Bell were in Lower Silesia, in the town of Neumarkt (modern day Sroda Slaska), and Leubus (modern day Lubiaz), disguised inside the facility
Schlesische Wekstätten dr Fürstenau.
The corporate backing was provided by A.E.G. (
Allgemeine Elekticitäts Gesellschaft
) and the giant Siemens electrical firm.
³⁵

Yet another underground facility existed at the
Schloss Fürstenstein
(Fürstenstein Castle) in lower Silesia, as well as disguised in a coal mine at Waldenburg, where the Bell may have been initially tested.

Castle Fürstenstein: Note the Hilly and Forested Terrain (From Igor Witkowski’s
The Truth About the Wunderwaffe)

A Wartime Tunnel Beneath Fürstenstein Castle
(From Igor Witkowski’s
The Truth About the Wunderwaffe; Mr.Witkowski is Visible in the Picture)

A little further away, there is another complex that is a part of the project, the Wenceslas Mine at Ludwigsdorf (modern day Ludwikowize). Here in a very remote valley, again disguised in a coal mine, the SS built a rat’s run of tunnels, bunkers, and a very odd object that looks like a large concrete henge, self-evidently a test rig of some sort.

The “Henge” At Ludwigsdorf (Ludwikowice)
(From Igor Witkowski’s
The Truth About the Wunderwaffe)

This “henge” stands
inside a pool
or basin, around which there are ports for heavy electrical cabling.

Witkowski’s Sketch of The Henge in its Basin or Pool,br/>(From Igor Witkowski’s
The Truth About the Wunderwaffe)

Witkowski also provided this author with more information that was not available when his book was published. Rainer Karlsch, a German historian who recently published a book in Germany on Hitler’s nuclear program, also

Mentioned in his book that a team of physicists from a German university (in Giessen) has carried out a lot of research in Ludwikowice
³⁶
, namely in (the Henge). The result is such that there are isotopes in the construction (in the reinforcement), which can only be the result of irradiation by a strong beam of neutrons, thus that there must have been some kind of device accelerating ions, rather heavy ones. It could be calculated what was the intensity of the radiation in 1945 and generally it was very high.
³⁷

In other words, whatever had been tested at the Henge – and there is every indication that it was the Bell – it not only required a sturdy structure to keep it
down
but also it gave off strong, heavy, radiation.

While experiments on the Bell first appear to have been undertaken in May and June of 1944,
³⁸
the project itself was conceived some two and a half years earlier, meaning that it required that long to bring whatever theory that underwrote it to practical and technical manifestation.

The entire research project as such was created in January 1942 – under the codename “Tor” (“Gate”), which functioned until August 1943. After this it was renamed or rather divided into two “sub-projects”. The codename “Tor” was replaced by the codenames: “Chronos” and “Laternenträger”. Both referred to “the Bell”, but the project had been divided into physical and medical-biological aspects. It was not established which codename corresponded to a given aspect of the work. The system powering “the Bell” probably received the codename Charite-Anlage”.
³⁹

The codenames are suggestive, since “Chronos” means “time” in the Greek, and “gate” is suggestive enough. Both taken together suggest that at least part of the intention behind the product was to
engineer time
. If so, it is another indicator that the Nazis had abandoned Special Relativity with its locally flat space. Indeed, they were perhaps experimenting in a kind of “hyper-relativity” or a locally-engineered spacetime curvature. The significance of the code names, then, points to a very radical and exotic physics, one that, while based
upon
some of Witkowski’s speculations, far exceeds them.