Project die Glocke
With the Reich winning the war, I raise question about some of these secret projects that have arisen in recent years and what they would have turned out to be if things were different. One of my favorites is the mythology surround the “die Glocke”
From Wikipedia
Allegedly an experiment carried out by Third Reich scientists working for the SS in a German facility known as Der Riese (“The Giant”) near the Wenceslaus mine and close to the Czech border, Die Glocke is described as being a device “made out of a hard, heavy metal” approximately 2.7 metres (9 ft) wide and 3.7 to 4.6 metres (12 to 15 ft) high, having a shape similar to that of a large bell. According to an interview of Witkowski by Cook, this device ostensibly contained two counter-rotating cylinders which would be “filled with a mercury-like substance, violet in color”. This metallic liquid was code-named “Xerum 525” and was “stored in a tall thin thermos flask a meter high encased in lead”. Additional substances said to be employed in the experiments, referred to as Leichtmetall (light metal), “included thorium and beryllium peroxides”.
There is a lot in that one paragraph. It starts with Der Riese. Again, from Wikipedia.
Riese (German for “giant”) is the code name for a construction project of Nazi Germany in 1943–45, consisting of seven underground structures located in the Owl Mountains and Książ Castle in Lower Silesia, previously Germany, now a territory of Poland.
In September 1943, Minister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer and the senior management of Organisation Todt started talks on the Project Riese. As a result, the Schlesische Industriegemeinschaft AG (Silesian Industrial Company) was created to conduct construction work. In November collective camps (Gemeinschaftslager) were established for forced labourers, mainly from the Soviet Union and Poland, POWs from Italy, the Soviet Union, and later Poland as an aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising.
There is also Xerum 525, which is a very mysterious substance that one can use for anything. This research supposedly created anti-gravity and wingless flight, but what else could it have developed? Interstellar travel?
With Hitler being assassinated in 1942, a lot of this probably would not happen. Looking into the two major players – Minister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer and Organisation Todt – the possibility of any progress on Project Riese is slim. Speer was a member of Hitler’s inner circle and trusted architect. Chances are the inner circles was secretly executed after the assassination, or went into hiding.
So if Project Riese was ever started, what happened to die Glocke? Another myth says that there was a Roswell-like crash in Nazi Germany in 1937. This being the trigger to the research that would become die Glocke, what research could have been drawn from that and where did it go? Names associated to the research are Ballenzo (??), V-2 rocket engineer Richard Miethe and Rudolf Schriever and Klaus Habermohl. Rudolf Schriever and Klaus Habermohl apparently worked together on research team to develop wingless flying machines (flying saucers). Richard Miethe as noted was a V-2 rocket engineer and did similar research into saucers. I can not find anything on a man named Ballenzo. Perhaps he was Italian? There is also mention of Viktor Schauberger and implosion vortex technology.
Another interesting note I found is “… S.S. Reichsführer Himmler recommended S. S. Grupenführer Hans Kammler to head the saucer projects and save the Fatherland. Hitler agreed. … ” [source: http://www.roswellufomuseum.com/ ]. Considering the source, I am not sure we can use it as fact but for story purposes, some of it can be used. This Hans Kammler guy is especially interesting because no one knows how he died (in our timeline).
All of their attempts at this new technology took place later in the war, which means after Reich Star’s assassination of Hitler. But the research is there and the crash can happen. This is the basis for a story line I want to start.
The Lost Files of die Glocke. This is going to be the basis of an intro adventure I am creating to introduce people to my renewed setting of Reih Star or Savage Reich Star.