- The conspiracy of “Die Glocke,” a purported Nazi Germany UFO/time machine hybrid has been around for years.
- According to legend, Die Glocke was one of the “wonder weapons” that German dictator Adolf Hitler developed in hopes to reverse the tide of World War II.
- While any actual proof of Die Glocke is spotty at best, UFO enthusiasts have tried to link the machine to a mysterious crash in the 1960s in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania.
Did Nazi scientists, eager to devise a weapon that could throw back advancing Allied armies, create a time-traveling UFO to win World War II? Almost certainly not. Nevertheless, the legend of “Die Glocke” (“The Bell”) persists in conspiracy and UFO circles.
Sci-fi writers and hoaxers may have actually concocted this machine, plying the postwar reputation of Nazi scientists being capable of almost any technological feat. A video from military historian Mark Felton explores the idea that Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary organization purportedly developed the bell-shaped device.
Even though the Nazis lost World War II, they emerged from the war with an almost mythical reputation for high-tech weapons. Nazi tanks were often technically superior to Allied tanks; the Luftwaffe flew fighter jets in combat before the Allies did; and the V (for Vengeance) series of terror weapons, including the V-1 cruise missile and V-2 ballistic missile, made for terrifying, though strategically questionable, weapons.
Adversaries considered the achievements of Nazi scientists and engineers to be so advanced, in fact, that the U.S. Army sent reconnaissance teams into Germany in the later stages of the war to secure scientists and military technology before other powers, particularly the Soviet Union, could capture them. The effort, known as Project Paperclip, secured V-2 missiles and important figures like Wernher von Braun, the infamous aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun who invented the V-2 and later designed the Saturn V rocket for NASA’s Apollo program.
According to legend, Die Glocke was reportedly one such German “wunderwaffe” (“wonder weapon”).
Rumors of the device first appeared as Nazi sci-fi in the 1960 book Morning of the Magicians. Die Glocke also showed up in Igor Witkowski’s 2000 book Prawda o Wunderwaffe (The Truth About the Wonder Weapon)—and soon after, Nick Cook’s The Hunt for Zero Point—as a “glowing, rotating contraption” that possibly had “some kind of antigravitational effect,” or was even a “time machine” that was part of an “SS antigravity program” for the “Repulsine” flying saucer.
Cook even floated the possibility that the notorious SS colonel Hans Kammler traded Die Glocke to the U.S. military in exchange for his freedom. (Kammler disappeared in the closing days of World War II and was never seen again.) While the Allies sent back home a trove of German superweapons during Project Paperclip, including jets and missiles, there’s no record of any version of Die Glocke ever being captured.
Still, some UFO conspiracy theorists believe U.S. forces captured Nazi scientists—and even Kammler himself—and put them to work on developing Die Glocke’s anti-gravity technology. As the legend goes, this culminated in the so-called Kecksburg Incident, when a bell-shaped UFO allegedly crashed outside Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in December 1965.
Does any of this check out? It’s extraordinarily unlikely. For starters, there’s one obvious hole in the theory: If the U.S. really had access to anti-gravity technology, then where are the anti-gravity planes?
Plus, many of the SS officials purportedly involved in the “secret UFO program” weren’t in any position to actually run it, and NASA attributes the Kecksburg Incident to the reentry of a failed Soviet Venus probe, Cosmos 96.
Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he's generally in favor of it. Kyle’s articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News, and others. He lives in San Francisco.
