World War 2 was one of the most painful periods the world has ever known. In terms of lost lives the cost is to this day immeasurable, but beyond the scores of souls that died fighting for their country vast numbers of innocent civilians died under the harsh whip of their Nazi captors, many under circumstances that while officially murky, the reality borders upon the fantastic. The purported story I am about to relate may very well have a basis in reality. Equally important, I believe it to be a part of what essentially can be viewed as an arc, a series of occurrences and claims that told separately make for a ripping good camp fire yarn, but when associated in sequence they suggest a chilling ring of possible truth, and a dark part of the past covered up by the Allies in their quest to set history. For the purpose of this article, I will relate two such tales; legends separated by a vast cold ocean and a lifetime of years.
Die Glocke, or "The Bell" was a purported Nazi scientific experiment. Developed as a secret weapon, speculation as to what it actually was varies. Some say it was a secret weapon or "Wunderwaffe". Others believe it was conceived for the purpose of generating an antigravity effect, a sort of key towards a technology that would provide the upper hand against any opposing military forces, its basis being associated with Nazi occultism.
Allegedly an experiment carried out by Third Reich scientists working for the Nazi SS in a facility known as Der Riese, "The Giant", Die Glocke is described as a device "made out of a hard, heavy metal" approximately 9 feet wide and 12 to 15 feet in height, having a shape similar to that of a large bell. Inside Die Glocke were two counter-rotating cylinders which would be filled with a strange mercury-like substance; a violet colored metallic liquid purportedly known as "Element-115", cautiously stored in a meter-high tall thin thermos flask which was encased in lead.
When activated, Die Glocke would emit deadly radiation; many Polish prisoners sentenced to slave labor fell victim to the effect of "The Nazi Bell" over the course of appeasing the wishes of their evil oppressors or as unwitting guinea pigs in fantastic if perverse experiments with the device. Rumored to have also fallen victim early on, several of the scientists involved with its development. Fringe authors such as Joseph P. Farrell and Henry Stevens have provided much conjecture about Die Glocke. Farrell claims that the device was considered so important to the Nazi's that they killed 60 scientists associated with the project and buried them in a mass grave. In his book Hitler's Suppressed and Still-Secret Weapons, Science and Technology Stevens speculates Die Glocke contained red mercury and describes stories alleging that a concave mirror on top of the device provided the ability to see images from the past during its operation. Many have speculated what became of Die Glocke after the Nazi's fell, but perhaps Farrell's contention is the most plausible. He contends that the device in fact resurfaced, some 20 years after WWII, crashing into the woods of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania on December 9th, 1965.
The Kecksburg UFO Crash
A brilliant fireball was witnessed by thousands and tracked by radar as it streaked across Ontario, Canada and at least six U.S. states before crashing into the woods near the small village of Kecksburg, some 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. A small boy claimed to have seen it land, his mother thought she saw blue smoke rising from the woods and called the authorities. Others reported feeling a violent "thump" in or about the time of the reported landing. Volunteer fire fighters and local residents stumbled upon an object shaped like an acorn about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Strange symbols resembling Egyptian hieroglyphics were said to be on the side of the object near its base. Witnesses reported that within minutes of the crash there was an unusually intense military presence that forcefully escorted everybody away from the immediate crash site.
The official military release on the incident was that a meteor had crashed into the Kecksburg woods. Strangely, within hours of the crash a large object was seen being transported out of town on a flatbed truck covered by a tarpaulin under military escort. This object was estimated to be about 12 feet high and some 10 feet wide at its base. One witness, when asked to describe its shape claimed it more resembled "a church bell" than anything else.
The very next morning after the crash, it is a fact that President Lyndon B. Johnson left his ranch, while on vacation, for an emergency meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, NASA Administrator James E. Webb and none other than the Governor of Pennsylvania, William Scranton.
When one looks back at the swift appearance of military personnel it becomes obvious that the object's flight path was being tracked closely, a fact underlined in the brevity of its recovery. Over the course of years this story has been a favorite among conspiracy theorists. Speculation has evolved over the decades as to what caused so much high end concern and cover-up. From from the classic crashed UFO scenario, to Russian spy satellite to a crashed Venus probe, many have theorized as to what found its way violently into the woods on that cold December evening almost fifty years ago.
Having read many of the theory's and closely followed the more famous UFO incidents over the years in print and on the web, I cannot help but come away with the notion that there may very well be more to the legends of Nazi skullduggery during WWII and that there may be possible tie-in to some of the contemporary UFO stories floating around. The eerie legend of Die Glocke, its description and the fact that the Nazi's dabbled in both the occult and pseudoscience, and the eye witness accounts of what crashed in the woods of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in 1965 suggests that quite possibly key pieces of history have been kept from us. In the coming weeks I'll continue with my assertion of a possible tie-in between Nazi legends and some of the more famous purported UFO incidents.
